Dr. Robert Kelly:

To add to Mr. Madouros's point around that survey in particular, obviously, there are individual firms, or individual credit decisions, which are for institutions. However, when one looks at that broad survey, Ireland has a lot of SMEs that say they can internally fund their own expansion. Maybe it is a reflection of what happened 15 years ago. What is stopping them increasing their investment is the level of certainty they face in the economy and other uncertainty factors, which they will cite. When we see some of the supports introduced in terms of energy, firms talk about how the biggest gain for them would be more certainty about the future outlook. Some of that is uncontrollable, as there are external factors, but that is key in decision-making for their investment, and not necessarily being blocked by a lack of finance. Maybe the Deputy is referring to certain firms that are more in the start-up space, but when we think about that broad across the macro, SMEs are not reporting impediments to finance as the biggest reason they cannot expand. When one looks at their surveys, staff is the biggest issue. More than 40% of them say the biggest impediment to growth is they cannot find staff. I am not saying there are not individual firms, if that is what is being referred to, but looking across the economy finance is certainly not the biggest thing SMEs are citing.