Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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There are a number of questions there. I will try to answer them all but if I miss some, the Chair might correct me. On the two loan products, the one most useful to SMEs under financial pressure to survive in the coming years is the loan guarantee because it is to do with working capital and finance now. That is the most urgent and useful one and the Covid version of that has been proven to help close to 8,000 businesses in the last couple of years. That will be of assistance.

The future growth loan ones are on the sustainability side. They are about future-proofing of businesses to make sure they are in a position to compete all over the world and can invest in technologies and innovations for the business, which the Deputy is very much into.

That is what it is about and should, in itself, position the company to be able to pay down its debts more easily in the future. I do not expect a higher rate of default, to be honest.

The Deputy asked about the 70% and 30% breakdown. It is part of the EU framework to allow for a 30% investment with regard to one's green journey. Most businesses are interested in that. If one is investing in the future of one's business and looks ahead at a loan product of more than ten years, one should be making such an investment to reduce one's demand for energy and one's costs. Businesses should also do so in response to our targets as a country and the targets of their customer base, which expects companies to do this. It is an acceptable requirement. While I agree with the Deputy that businesses are under immense pressure at present just to survive for the next year or two, this is a different product that looks over the next ten years to invest in today. It covers the credit guarantee as well.

The schemes work quite well. We would have liked to have them in place in response to the financial crisis back in 2010-11 but credit guarantees came a little bit later than that. The schemes recognise that some sectors and businesses find it difficult to raise finance from the existing lending network. Putting in place a State guarantee de-risks that and enables a greater availability of money in the form of more approvals for companies that might not be able to pass the test because the criteria will be changed. That is the benefit of such a guarantee. It helps companies that might struggle to get finance.

There was also a high level of due diligence in these schemes and in the companies that are availing of the schemes and drawing down. The banks, credit unions and non-traditional lenders are all asked to use strong credit control criteria to do this right. We wish to support viable businesses but they are not there to support a business that might not be able to pay it down. It is a loan at the end of the day. We wish to have such due diligence. The future growth loan scheme and the GSLS are generally for companies that are not necessarily drawing on other borrowings as well. They are generally to invest in the future of business. Default rates are quite low throughout Europe. It is not just an Irish phenomenon. They are quite low across the board. One is probably investing in companies that have very strong business cases and plans, are taking on international markets and thinking ahead and are usually in quite a good position. We wish to encourage that growth and ambition because that is future-proofing the job potential as well.

With regard to the permits, the figures for 2021 were approximately 27,000 or 28,000. We are on track to be somewhere around 34,000 or 35,000 this year. I quoted the figure of 40,000 because we still have a few months to go, potentially. There seems to be considerable demand for permits, possibly reflecting where we are as a society. More than 2,500,000 people are at work. Most sectors and businesses we talk to tell us they cannot get enough people. They are looking for more talent.

Later today, we will announce the confirmation of the permits for the home care sector, which every Deputy has brought to my attention in the past year. To be clear, the permits should never be the long-term solution. They should be of a temporary assistance while the sector or various industries put in place new training programmes and innovations to reduce demand. They should not be a permanent solution but we expect the demand to continue and that is why we have had to put extra resources into it this year to deal with the backlog from last year. At one stage, there was a six-month waiting list with more than 10,000 permits in the queue. The figure is less than 1,000 now and the waiting list has gone from 22 weeks back down two or three weeks in most cases, which is a positive for the country.

Generally, sectors such as the nursing home or home care sectors are under pressure for staff and we try to respond to that. Allocating extra money through this process and the teams enables that process because we wish to be able to compete at a high level. Historically, we were proactive in our section and were ahead of most countries in Europe with our timelines. That slipped because of the pressure over the past year. It was probably similar throughout Europe but we have it back up to an acceptable timeframe and we wish to keep it at that if at all possible.