Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 24 October 2019

Public Accounts Committee

2018 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 30 - Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Chapter 10 - Forestry Grants

9:00 am

Mr. Brendan Gleeson:

We paid €25 million into that and the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation also provided funding. That leveraged €300 million in loan funding for SMEs and mid-cap companies. Some 40% of the fund was dedicated to working capital loans for food businesses at an interest rate of 4.2%. The key feature of the scheme was that security was not required to get the loan. There was another scheme, the Brexit loan fund, that was made available to farmers. That also had the same configuration whereby we put in €25 million and the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation also provided funding. We leveraged a fund of €300 million, of which 40% was made available to farmers.