Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for interrupting the Fine Gael Parliamentary Party meeting here, but one of the commitments in the jobs action plan was about small and medium enterprise finance. We have had this discussion already. Last year, the pillar banks, AIB and Bank of Ireland, were supposed to loan €2 billion each to SMEs - that is, a total of €4 billion. Yet the Central Bank report, which has been published since the Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation last met, shows that only €1.9 billion of new lending was done by all banks to the SME sector. In addition, the ISME survey showed that 50% of companies have been turned down for loans.

In the context of monitoring the jobs action plan, has the Minister made any inquiries as to the difference between the €4 billion of new lending that was supposed to go into SMEs and the €1.9 billion of new lending noted by the Central Bank? We continue to have a major problem concerning finance for SMEs.

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