Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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In terms of the highlights, a flavour of which I gave earlier, since 2012, just over 5,000 loans issued, at €83.5 million, supporting 10,000 jobs. In terms of sectors, which is probably interesting, 20% of loans were in wholesale and retail, 11% were in manufacturing, 10% were in other services and 9% were in professional, scientific and tech. A total of 42% of approvals were to start-ups, which is significant, and we define a start-up in this context as a business that has been in action for less than 18 months, while 81% of loans were to enterprises with three employees or fewer. In 2023 alone, there were 442 loans, totalling €6.6 million. There is €30 million in the MFI bank account at the moment, so it is quite well financed.

As for the lowlights, of course, we never hear about those but I will give the committee a sense of the challenges. One of the reasons for bringing the body into the Department is in order that it will be more aligned with Department of enterprise policy and SME policy and will be more responsive to that.

I will come back to the Deputy on his point about reporting, rather than give him a wrong steer.