Mr. Seán Murphy:

Crowdfunding and other alternative funding vehicles are all welcome, again no more than the partial loan guarantee scheme. These are all additional helps which will assist in broadening the landscape of funding available. My core point, however, is what do we call success in crowdfunding? What is a number that has a massive reach in how it would affect the market? My sense is that getting to €500 million in crowdfunding would be a massive achievement for crowdfunding but even that is not going make an enormous impact on the credit availability landscape. While welcome, it would not change the feeling on the ground when it comes to availability.

More can be done to increase business awareness. We will be bringing Microfinance Ireland around the chambers network with a series of road shows this year. Microfinance Ireland would have worked with other entities last year but was not getting the same pick-up. It has now come to us and we will profile its service through our chambers boards. That will be a good conduit to local communities. One talks to the board which is often reflected in local media coverage. The board would typically have leading businesses in the area. To be fair, we, along with other organisations, participated in preparing the document Your Business, Your Bank which covered the basics which all of us, banks and businesses, may have forgotten in the noughties such as that character and credit history matters.

There may well be a case for a proper marketing-communications plans to be devised for this. This involves money being spent and many Departments, rightly from their perspective, do not want to spend money on such exercises. If one looks at the roll-out of the single European payments area, SEPA, and the marketing plan funded by banks and overseen by a committee embracing banks, marketers and Central Bank of Ireland staff, it has achieved much and the recognition of SEPA has been significant. Whether it is for Intreo or other work-related schemes, Departments, which spend billions of euro a year, claiming they do not have money for marketing-communications plans means there will be failure in the activation of those schemes.