Mr. Pat Farrell:

Up to 2,000 credit applications are approved every day. Do the banks get every one of these right? No. There are some people who are approved who should not have been and their loans will become bad ones. The banks are probably refusing people who may not have made a good case in the first place but if they go through the Credit Review Office they may get credit after all. Is the system 100% perfect? Of course it is not. We are working mightily hard to make sure we get all the applications right but it must be remembered we are all human and it is a fallible decision-making process.

I take the point about debtor days. Mr. Trethowan already alluded to it that the amount of credit by stealth that is taken from business to business is high. We have a culture of it and it has not gotten much better since the downturn.

The banks have been trying to play their part in preparing business plans for accountants of SMEs. If every SME accountant used our template, it would help drive up the quality of applications and get the decision right the first time rather than having to be submitted again or through the Credit Review Office. I would like to be out of business too.

This is a journey. I am not trying to pretend that everything is rosy in the garden.

I accept the comment from Senator White, which one would have to wear lightly, as would anybody who works in the banking sector. There is still a considerable amount of work to do.

In terms of business failures, one of the important aspects is the reform of the bankruptcy laws which we have supported. One of the problems for business, to which Deputy Lawlor referred, is that in this country there is a culture that it is not okay to fail and there is a stigma attaching to failing in business. Perhaps one of the reasons for this is the bankruptcy laws, which effectively mean that one is cast out for 12 years from one's business activity. That will be changed quite quickly to a much shorter discharge period. One will see some restructuring of business activity going through that process.