Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

That is a very generous allocation. First, I thank the many Deputies who contributed to the debate, all 33 speakers. That is one in five of all Members, if one deducts the Ceann Comhairle, and shows a good level of interest in the debate. I am not surprised. Everywhere I go - the Minister of State, Deputy Perry, reports the same - the issue that comes up repeatedly is access to finance. It is the burning issue in people's minds.

The new Secretary General in the Department of Finance has taken an acute interest in this matter. The work he has done with the Minister of State in touring the country and getting much closer to business, finding exactly where the shoe is pinching with the credit institutions, has brought in a great deal of extra information that we can put in front of people. It allows the Government to hold banks more accountable. It has been complemented by the work of consultants such as Mazars and the Central Bank, from whose reports many speakers quoted.

The truth is blunt. It is there for the banks and everybody else to see. Our credit system is not working as it should. There are many reasons for that. We know there is an enormous legacy of bad property debts, and so on. In addition, however, the skills needed to lend to small business, especially business oriented towards the export sector, have been lost in the banking system and are having to be rebuilt. Enterprise Ireland, the Minister of State, Deputy Perry, and small business interests of various kinds are helping the banks to rebuild. This is an urgent and important role. That is why Government has insisted that a €3.5 billion target would be set for each bank to deliver into the small business sector this year. We want to see that delivery.

What we are doing here is not a substitute for that role. The banks have to fix this problem; that is their duty and we will hold them to account for it. We recognise, however, there are also real failures in the market. Some speakers mentioned how small this scheme was but people need to look at the bigger picture, at what the Government is doing in the sphere of access to finance. Yes, this is a fund of €40 million over the coming five years but look also at the loan guarantee scheme which has the potential to reach €450 million over the coming years. There is the developing capital fund of up to €150 million in the same period. There are the innovation funds which, cumulatively, will come close to €400 million on the commitments already made. There is the Silicon Valley alliance, announced by the Minister for Finance during the week, another fund of €100. There is Enterprise Ireland's seed capital fund, which, at €650 million, is the biggest fund managed in the seed area anywhere in Europe. There is a quiet transformation going on - one might almost say revolution - in the way access to finance is being stimulated and force-fed into the system by Government. It is not that the Government is standing back and allowing the problems in access to finance to fester.

Totted up, these schemes come to some €1.3 billion to €1.5 billion, across the board of different initiatives that are there to support industry to expand and grow. A feature that characterises them, which fits into much of what Government is trying to do, is that it is not always the huge pots of State money that are needed. The loan guarantee scheme is a relatively small amount of exposure to the State but it levers up these funds. In every one of the schemes we will seek to get private sector money to join and complement what Government is able to put into it. It is about thinking smart and being innovative and that is true of this scheme, too. We are putting in €10 million in equity but we will be borrowing from the banks and will exploit the European Investment Fund as a partial guarantor. It is a way of playing a little smarter in order to make up for weaknesses in our banking system.

Many people will look enviously at the likes of Germany with its famous Mittelstand companies, where banks traditionally have been really strong in supporting the family-owned business. The backbone of German industry, which has been such a success in recent years, has been built on a banking model that has been well suited to those sorts of smaller scale companies. It allows them to grow and export. We have not had such a banking system. Even with the best work by the banks, we are in a difficulty. They have difficulties in providing the sort of international stretch we need to build our companies. As a result, we are now obliged to step in, as a State, and support that change. I welcome the broad support for this, even among those who were critical. There was nobody who said it was not worth supporting. I acknowledge there has been difficulty. I would say my officials have grey hairs they did not have 12 months ago because of the difficulty in getting this through the system.

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