Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
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Go raibh míle maith agaibh as ucht bhur gcur i láthair. During the discussion with the head of the Credit Review Office, I made the point that the lack of credit, the difficulty around credit and the debt distress that exists in the Irish SME structure comprise a big problem. Four or five years into this process, I am shocked that this problem is persisting even with the delivery of solutions such as microfinance and the establishment of the Credit Review Office. The level of demand for those solutions has not increased, for a start. People have very good insights - there is anecdotal evidence of why these solutions are not being used - but we do not have a more solid, tangible or concrete understanding of exactly why the level of take-up is so low among everybody on both sides of the table. That understanding does not exist in the Department and it does not exist in the Credit Review Office itself. That has to be tackled if people are to be able to measure the real reasons and deal with them.

Mr. Murphy made a valuable point about one of the major problems with this whole process. There is a lack of skills in the banking sector when it comes to SMEs and there is lack of skills in SMEs when it comes to the banking sector. I suggest that the local enterprise offices should be used as a major platform to deliver those skills across the whole enterprise sector. I know the county enterprise boards delivered a great deal of training to start-ups in the past. Once a business has started up, it very seldom plugs into the county enterprise board structure again unless it needs a specific skill. Maybe there should be a strong push to get the local enterprise offices to deliver these financial skills to businesses for the purposes of developing healthy functioning businesses and helping them to understand and engage properly with the credit world.

It is a big shock that cash flow is still getting worse, even at the so-called end of the crisis. It is a big difficulty. Does Mr. Murphy have any figures with regard to the cash flow experiences of businesses? How many businesses are falling off or closing as a result of cash flow issues? Mr. Murphy alluded to the debt distress issue when he suggested that a foot is being placed on the neck of future investment. People like Professor Morgan Kelly have spoken about the possibility of many SMEs being pushed off the desk, with regard to their functioning, if the policies of the ECB change. What is Mr. Murphy's understanding of the depth of debt distress within SMEs? How is the reduced capacity and reduced refinancing within banking affecting the members of Chambers Ireland?