Ms Jean Carberry:

I will first answer a question the Deputy did not ask, but alluded to, relating to the credit unions. We are proud of the work we have been doing with the credit unions. We have been working closely with the division of the Department of Finance that is responsible for credit union policy. We have successfully included a group of credit unions in two of our loan guarantee schemes, specifically the Ukraine credit guarantee scheme, and we are in negotiations about including them in the new growth and sustainability loan scheme. We see that as a way of providing some risk protection to credit unions as they learn more about operating in the business sector. I agree with the Deputy that they are an important untapped source of credit for businesses and they should be our version of the German Sparkassen.

The Deputy's questions are unfortunately difficult for me to answer, because they are not my areas. On the questions on entrepreneurship policy, entrepreneurship is definitely a very important focus of the Department and of Enterprise Ireland. I am not responsible for it, so I cannot tell the Deputy if there are plans to look at it, but I will certainly bring it back to the Department. I know our new Secretary General, Declan Hughes, is a very much a passionate advocate for entrepreneurship, so I would be surprised if there were not plans to renew it.

On the issue of the Public Appointments Service, PAS, an exercise was done approximately two years ago to look at the balance on State boards. We perform better than the private sector, but there are certain boards where the balance is terrible, but they are old holdouts. I am thinking of some of the very old and esoteric State boards, which have poor balance. However, in general, we are better performers.

On the question of a review of PAS and its processes, I cannot answer that, because it is not something that falls within my remit. We will not be specifying board membership specifically in the Bill, because this is a very simple and clean Bill. We would like to take it through quickly. It is really just about the technical, statutory basis for moving ownership. However, it will be then for the Minister to look at that the issue of board membership.