Marc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail)
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Outside the committee, I asked a number of parliamentary questions and although replies have come back, I have not had a chance to look at them yet. I have an issue with the corporation. This was established for SMEs. In this instance, it certainly highlights a failing in the rules because I do not think it captures the spirit of where we were coming from with the SBCI, in that a company that has a substantial foreign holding is given €20 million to pay off a loan from a foreign bank.

In pursuing this matter previously, I raised it before this committee and I know that the Comptroller and Auditor General has also looked into the matter. I know that in responses to parliamentary questions, the view taken, and these are my words paraphrasing it, was that an Irish company had its lunch eaten by another company, but the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland, SBCI, operated within the rules. It may well have operated within the rules, but it did not capture the spirit of the intentions under which it was established. A sum of €20 million to a company that was operating abroad, which I am sure is a very reputable company, and good luck to it, certainly was not where we were coming from. It is something that we should look into, if only to identify the fact that the terms of reference or the regulations and guidelines that underpin the establishment of the SBCI were flawed to the extent that the money did not go to where we intended it to go, which was to the SMEs.