Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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They made a presentation to us. We had the pillar banks in and we also had representatives from sparkassen and Irish Rural Link. They have been trying to get into the midlands especially. I refer to community banking, perhaps piggybacking on the post offices and the credit unions. The sparkassen offer very competitive rates, especially for industry.

Senator Reilly asked whether we could invite the representatives. We were all very impressed with them. They have issued an invitation to the committee members to go to Germany to see exactly how sparkassen operate. They are in every small community in Germany. While the Department of Finance and the Central Bank are responsible, the sparkassen model is of great interest to this committee. The cost of finance featured so much during the discussion on the cost of doing business that we decided it was very important to have the financiers in here also.