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

There is a massive disconnect between the size of the problem, the ambition of the Government and the delivery of the Government. The Government's delivery is nowhere near its ambition, which in turn is nowhere near the actual problem itself. We heard a number of SME proposals in the budget. They are resuscitations of proposals the Government has previously made but are not working. The volume of loans guaranteed under the credit guarantee scheme is a fraction of the level the Government said it wanted to achieve. Some €15 million has been provided to 110 companies, which have created 870 jobs. It was initially supposed to be a €450 million scheme. The Minister suggested that the Government has provided €150 million, but this is just a fraction of what one scheme was meant to deliver. Just 186 companies have benefitted from the employment and investment incentive scheme. We still have not been able to find out how many jobs were created from this scheme in 2012. I am trying to urge the Government to get to grips with the exact size of the problems in society before matching its response to that size.

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