Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour)

What we envisage is a co-guarantee in terms of risk sharing with the banks making a decision on a loan application and the Government stepping in to guarantee 50% of the loan. The benefit of such an arrangement is that there is an alignment of interests between the loan originator and the guarantor. I know the Minister has concerns in that there are ventures for which there is low collateral. They may be new types of ventures and the banks are risk averse to those. Surely the Government can intervene in the case of specified areas and deal with those applications. As we saw on "The Frontline" programme on Monday, there are innovators waiting to take the plunge. We should push them along the way by removing the obstacles and facilitating them.

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