Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 23 October 2018
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach
Report on Local Public Banking: Discussion
1:30 pm
Mr. Ed Sibley:
We would certainly hope that there continues to be investment. The SMEs are continuing to invest in their businesses. In and around 23% of SMEs look for finance. I would suggest that a large number of them are financing investment on their own account or through other means. Certainly we would, from an economic perspective, be hoping that SMEs continue to invest in their business. Again, it is difficult to be precise in terms of figures. What we can see is that the total stock of SME lending has reduced from in and around €30 billion in 2010 down to €16 billion as of today. There was a high degree of and unsustainable levels of indebtedness at that period. We would expect SME lending to continue to recover to some extent.