Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome some of the changes the Government has introduced with regard to finance. The scale of the problem is that approximately €40 billion in private sector investment has come of the economy in recent years. The Government set up the credit guarantee scheme which cost it €6 million over three years. It is putting in €2 million on an annual basis through that scheme to try to solve the problem in the credit area and it is putting in roughly €2 million on an annual basis through the microfinance fund. Given that the State has the second worst credit environment in Europe, just behind Greece, and given the vast problem we have, this amounts to tinkering around the edges of it and it is not enough to deal with it.

The real elephant in the room is the banking industry, an industry most of which the Government owns at this stage. The fact that it has not been able to orient the banking industry to carry out its responsibility is a disgrace. The Credit Review Office has dealt with 150 or 200 applications in recent times and has overturned the decisions in 55% of the refused applications. That means that the office is dealing with a number of applications on an annual basis and is overturning the decision in 55% of them. That, by definition, determines that the system in place under the Minister's stewardship is malfunctioning.

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