Conor Lenihan (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)

It is disappointing that we have not had a bigger draw-down in this area but the banks and Enterprise Ireland are working collaboratively to encourage their own systems of understanding of each other's work to ensure that can be achieved. A new scheme was announced by my senior colleague, the Minister, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe, with regard to an exchange programme between Enterprise Ireland and the banks.

We must be clear, in terms of credit flow in Ireland, that because of the boom years and the dependence on property based lending as opposed to lending based on cash flow businesses or real businesses, as other people might describe them, there was a major loss of expertise and analysis within banks to lend to real businesses. Part and parcel of the initiative of Enterprise Ireland, and this Department and my senior colleague, has been to try to encourage much more movement in this area. There is a vibrant exchange programme now in terms of the banks placing personnel in Enterprise Ireland and vice versa and from my own constituency experience, I have had to intervene to a certain extent with local companies where major misunderstandings had developed in terms of banks lending to companies and not realising the viability of such companies, even in these terrible times of recession. There is a learning curve to be gone through by everyone involved in this area.

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