Ms Patricia Callan:

I want to add one point on the enhanced Government funding angle. It goes back to the issue of competitiveness between companies here and those in the North and Britain. The UK Government has demonstrated that where it becomes a partner to an investment decision, it is much more successful. On crowd funding, for example, the Crowdcube model has been phenomenally successful, with the government underwriting 20% of an investment. It instils an air of confidence to generate a lot of private sector money. That is how the traditional venture capital, VC, model works, with the government putting in X amount and attracting matching funding. Hundreds of millions has been allocated to schemes such as credit guarantee and microfinance, but we cannot spend the money because these schemes are not working. We need to find a scheme that will deliver. In particular, the equity piece has to come into play because banks keep telling us they cannot go beyond the figure of 70%.

Our members tell us that in the 1980s that was done through grants because State aid rules were not there. We come up against State aid rules all the time now so we must be more creative. We can learn much from the UK model in respect of that.