Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

I thank my colleague, Deputy John Perry, for tabling this motion. I recognise that the Minister is sitting through the entire debate. I hope he is listening to what Members are saying and taking it on board.

I have one question to ask and one suggestion to make in the short time allotted. What has happened to the Minister's commitment to this issue? Almost a month ago he spoke at the Small Firms Association annual conference in Dublin and stated:

Your chairman has called on the Government to step up to the plate and set up a Government-backed loan guarantee scheme. I am pleased to tell you that officials in my Department and the Department of Finance are looking at options for a loan guarantee scheme. Detailed discussions on how this can be achieved are under way and I hope they can be finalised very shortly. The scheme would target market failure in small business lending when commercially viable businesses fail to get credit because of insufficient collateral and information deficits despite having demonstrated an ability to repay. Over 2,000 loan guarantee schemes operate in almost 100 countries. Ireland is one of the few nations in the European Union that does not have some form of loan guarantee scheme. Getting credit flowing to small businesses is vital to our economic recovery.

That was what the Minister stated, according to a press release on his own website. When he addresses the motion, therefore, will he give the House a detailed answer as to why the commitment he made to the Small Firms Association a month ago now seems to be entirely absent? This is suggested by Government policy regarding his strategy for supporting small businesses. I do not understand why he has changed his tune. Clearly, the Taoiseach shares the view this should not happen but we have not had a detailed explanation as to why the State cannot do what hundreds of countries are doing to try to ensure that banks which are risk averse at present can extend loan facilities to small businesses that desperately need cash.

We understand how difficult it is for banks to access cash at present because of their mistakes. They are being funded weekly by the lender of last resort, the European Central Bank, and therefore funds are not readily available. None the less, we must ensure the funds they have are being made available to small businesses that have proven themselves likely to be able to repay. The State can assist in that process by adopting the motion my party has proposed and which the Minister endorsed a month ago in his address to that conference. I hope he will address that point in some detail.

There are many small firms which want to be able to employ people on a short-term basis, namely, contractors such as painters, tradespeople or whoever, who are lucky enough to get a job for a month or six or eight weeks. They want to be able to re-employ staff they had to let go in the past 18 months but cannot do so because people are not willing to come back and work on a short-term basis owing to the hassle involved in coming off jobseeker's benefit and then returning to social welfare at the end of their short-term contract. People are not willing to come back and work on a short-term basis because of the hassle involved in coming off job seeker's benefit and trying to go back onto social welfare at the end of the short-term contract or piece of work on offer.

This is a significant problem for small businesses at the moment that they cannot get people, even though enormous numbers are unemployed, for short-term work because of the difficulties people have in availing of the job seeker's benefit system. That is something the Government needs to address, so that people can come off and go on the dole quickly, when and where work is available, if we are to reduce our exposure to welfare payments as well as giving job opportunities when they arise.

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