Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the delegation from MFI. I acknowledge the Chairman's efforts to contact me over the weekend to give me time to discuss some of my concerns about the scheme. Ms Murray said that MFI is not a panacea, which I accept, but unfortunately MFI is being presented as the panacea for the inability of even good companies with solid business plans to get credit, which is a serious problem for small businesses. They would love to have even the promise of a ten-day turnaround when it is taking five, six or seven weeks to get an appointment at some of banks. I am glad the director drew a line under that today.

When MFI was established the idea was that it would be responsible for investment of €40 million in small business over five years. It is well short of that, at €1.62 million. Where is the original target now? Does MFI expect to engage in €40 million worth of investment over the course of the next five years? As it prepares for the review, where is the target?

I believe I saw MFI at the National Ploughing Championships. How have the applications fed through into the October figures? What were the weekly applications and the weekly turnaround in October? The last figure we have here is up to the end of September. There were 149 applications in the launch phase from October to March, which collapsed to 75. Was the PR not good enough? Did people just not understand it? Surely at that stage alarm bells must have started to ring about the effectiveness of the marketing.

Ms Murray mentioned one of the case studies being a community-based activity. Is MFI funding community-based companies as well? I am really interested in the scheme under which people on back-to-work schemes to borrow up to €5,000. Can Ms Murray give us some detail or send us some detail about that? What kind of relationship does MFI have with the Revenue Commissioners, which have the best database for business in the country? I suggested to the Minister of State at the Department for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Perry, that an information sheet could be sent out with VAT requests or any kind of correspondence with the Revenue Commissioners on the part of MFI and the credit guarantee scheme, because there are many schemes. Has MFI engaged with the Revenue Commissioners to work with them to promote its services?