Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 15 April 2014

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Access to Finance for SMEs: Bank of Ireland, Ulster Bank and AIB

4:20 pm

Mr. Bernard Byrne:

Deputy Lawlor also asked about young entrepreneurs. To some extent this is sector-dependent, if we assume many of the younger entrepreneurs are more predominant in technology and media. We are close to all of the start-ups and all of the accelerator and incubator funds. We are committed in terms of our sectoral capacity, to which Mr. Burke referred. We have a sectoral team focused on innovation. None of these start-ups have assets which can be used as collateral. Some might just need a credit card and there may not be much capital required. We are trying to work as closely as we can with them. We are the only financial sponsor of the Dublin Web Summit, which was attended by 10,000 people. The sector needs to be understood. It will not be capable of supporting large amounts of debt at any point in time. Businesses must be enabled to process and become part of the payment system, and we believe we can help with this. We have available accelerator and equity funds. We partly fund the Dublin Business Innovation Centre, through which people can start businesses. We believe we are playing our part in this respect. It is not collateral-based so one must understand the business. Mostly it is about facilitating rather than providing capital.