Ms Gillian Buckley:

Bridging has a number of facets. It allows the organisation to draw down the grant. Usually, grants are paid retrospectively, so without the bridging they cannot access the grants. That is a fundamental issue for a lot of projects because they do not have the money, and it also adds a cost and a layer of duplication to the process.

One thing that could be considered is whether we could do more front-loading of grants and then put the checks and balances in for second and subsequent claims so that the organisations do not need bridging finance. At the moment, bridging helps them unlock a great number of grant projects. On the term loan, many projects, particularly those of smaller organisations and smaller communities, may not have the nest egg the Deputy is talking about. If they do, they should not be using it. They should keep it as a nest egg, as the Deputy wisely said, so that if there is a speed bump they will have some resources. Rather than depleting it, they could borrow on the back of it. It is easier to borrow if you have a little bit of money in the background to augment the operations of the organisation. Our view is that the amount of bridging finance projects have to draw down should be minimised. They should take loans from the likes of ourselves or Community Finance Ireland instead of depleting their own nest eggs because that would accelerate the development of the project.