Mr. Kieron Brennan:

I will come back to Deputy Lyons on country enterprise boards, CEBs, which are being subsumed into LEOs, and how they can contribute, as well as the partnerships we have referred to in a number of examples such as Kilkenny and Dundrum where credit unions and CEBs have come together. Such a board provides two broad types of support to make that work. One is the underwriting of the credit assessment. The boards, more so than the credit unions, are best placed to have knowledge. They have evaluated grant applications to support business for years and, therefore, they have the technical expertise to plug in. More important, they have a range of supports for the 19 year old with the next Google when he approaches them and that includes, for example, mentoring panels in some cases. Many of them have volunteer panels comprising business people or senior managers who can partner on a voluntary basis with those small companies, give them encouragement and expertise and shepherd them through the process.

Beyond that, there is a range of existing supports under the CEBs. This means three pieces are plugged together - the traditional support from the CEB for an emerging business; voluntary mentoring of emerging businesses; and the credit union with the financial piece - all of which, as my colleague said, involve risk for the credit union. Anything that mitigates the risk would be welcome.