Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There are many questions. On Deputy Murphy's point, we support crowd funding. It is one issue which is being examined in the course of this year by the group I established. My Department and the Department of Finance are involved in it. It offers potential.

I accept the point made by Deputy Calleary that there is a delay in getting approvals. It is monitored by RedC, formerly Mazars. I hope to see improvement in that. The banks are being made aware of the dissatisfaction that they are not meeting the turnaround targets.

The ESRI was far from damning in its approach. It recognised that there is a problem with access to finance, as is inevitable following the sort of bank collapse which has occurred in this State. We have also received substantial praise for the range of instruments we have brought in. This week the OECD visited Ireland. We have micro-finance, loan guarantees and the SME fund. These are entirely new instruments for the State and innovative approaches by the Government to meet access to finance. We would like to see them rolled out more quickly, but we can still point to at least 400 jobs that are in place today that would not have been if we did not have micro-finance and credit guarantee schemes.

The other schemes involve development capital and seed funding, and are absolutely crucial if we are to see Irish companies start up, develop and go to scale. They are innovative and have never been tried in the country before. The Deputy needs to allow some time for them to work. I share his impatience, but they are innovative. Far from the rant he had about Government strategy, these are the sort of smart innovations that we need in an economy like ours.

The Deputy, above all, should know that we inherited an economy heading for 120% debt, with the huge hole in its public finances. We are providing a jobs strategy which is credible because it takes into account the fact that we need sustainable public finances. If one does not have sustainable public finances one will not be able to build sustainable enterprises. These two approaches have to go in tandem. The stimulus funds, SME finance and using global sourcing of €500 million are all innovative approaches to resolve our huge crisis.

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