Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)

I welcome the opportunity to make some brief comments in support of the Government's amendment of the motion before the House. All political parties in the House recognise the importance of the SME sector, supporting as it does in excess of 700,000 jobs in the economy. At the heart of the motion tabled by Fine Gael is the issue of access to credit, which of course is fundamentally important for all small to medium-sized enterprises in Ireland.

I agree with the comments of the Minister, Deputy Batt O''Keeffe, last night to the effect that the preferred option is that the banking system should function normally, without any direct intervention from the State in terms of loan guarantees. Having said that, the Government has had to introduce a number of unprecedented policy initiatives to get the banking system working normally by the setting up of NAMA, for example, which has forced the financial institutions to face up to the full extent of the loan losses from the toxic loans in relation to property and so forth. NAMA will help to cleanse the banking system of those loans and as part of the recapitalisation we have insisted that AIB and Bank of Ireland lend €12 billion between them over the course of 2010-11. Mr. Trethowan's credit review office is reporting on the implementation of that on a monthly basis, both by sector and indeed, by geographic area.

I commend the Ministers, Deputy Brian Lenihan and Batt O'Keeffe, on the hands-on approach they have taken in ensuring that the banks extend credit in an appropriate manner to the SME sector.

See this speech in context