Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The initiative should be seen in the context of the Government's overall policy of identifying and putting in place sources of lending to the Irish economy, other than lending directly from the main banks. There are three funds now operating out of the National Pensions Reserve Fund, Silicon Valley Bank has a $100 million fund to lend to IT companies, the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation has a micro investment fund and there are various other sources of lending now available. In fact, we are at a quite advanced stage with one of the Chinese investment funds to put another piece in place. If one sees it as a series of sources of funding to different types of SMEs in Ireland, some for working capital and some for start-ups, there is a range of options and this would be another option. That is the context in which it should be seen.

The banks are in the loop. They are not involved in the discussions, but the Department of Finance is keeping both the Central Bank and the main banks fully informed of what might happen. So far, there does not appear to be any difficulty in using the commercial banks as a vehicle for delivering money to SMEs sourced from KfW. I do not know about quantums; I do not expect it to be massive amounts of money, but it is another significant source of funding to SMEs.

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