Ms Jean Carberry:

We are seriously looking at increasing the limits for two reasons. One is inflation since 2012. Yesterday's €25,000 is probably getting close to today's €40,000. The second thing is that the amount of the easy guarantee covered up to €25,000 and it has been increased to €50,000. During Covid, we increased the maximum loan size to €50,000. As I alluded to earlier, MFI could not cope with the demand for loans. We want to finish the new IT system and then we will have to get approval, as one has to for all things, from the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, but our intention is to seriously look at raising the upper limit.