Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent)

The Minister answered the question of whether the fund will be targeted. Clearly, it will be down to the banks. They could delay people very significantly, because people must be turned down by the banks before they can apply to the microenterprise loan fund. However, other issues come into play as well if this is going to work. One of them is the provision of incubator units, particularly if something will be manufactured in the enterprise as opposed to something done on the Internet or whatever. I can give the Minister an example. I met somebody recently who is in the hobby sector and is seeking to get onto the back to work allowance scheme. He was going to try to manufacture in a small shed in his back garden, so we went through the detail of what that involved. He did not qualify for a grant because he would have to get planning permission, and he could not get planning permission on that site because it is in a housing estate. All these issues come into play. If he did have planning permission, he was faced with commercial rates and development contributions with the application for planning permission. In the absence of a suite of measures such as a proactive approach to the provision of incubator units this fund might not be capable of being leveraged by people who have viable ideas.

See this speech in context