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

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. There is no doubt that the funding difficulties being experienced by small and medium-sized enterprises has been a huge issue right through the period of this Government's term in office. We have introduced a great deal of change in an effort to respond to that. The remit of the Credit Review Office has been repeatedly extended, for example, with the limits increased to try to deal with the problem. The Minister for Finance is introducing protections for these types of loan arrangements to ensure the new owners of credit books adhere to the protections that exist under the consumer protection provisions relating to credit servicing. That will be included in the new legislation the Minister is bringing through the Oireachtas.

The Deputy is correct that we have introduced a draft statutory instrument to extend the credit guarantee to exiting banks. That has gone through drafting and is now in the phase where we are rolling out the agreements with participating banks. That process is nearing completion. This was designed to deal with exiting banks, and Ulster Bank, to which the Deputy referred, is not among those banks. We will have to consider the specific circumstances he highlighted to see whether we need to introduce a new statutory instrument. The legislation is at an advanced stage but is proving to be rather complex because it deals with the State giving guarantees, which has given rise to difficulties we have had to work through.

The Deputy rightly identified that we need to look much more closely at what exactly is happening in the case of the Ulster Bank loans to see whether there is a way of accommodating them, either through a new statutory instrument, which would be necessary to extend the remit of existing provisions, or through an instrument introduced when we have the new primary legislation in place. I assure the Deputy that there is no lack of urgency in respect of this issue either in my Department or on the part of Government. This is an area where we are continuing to respond to changing circumstances in the marketplace and seeking to develop instruments that respond to those changes. The introduction of the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland is leading to the introduction of new financial instruments into the marketplace. I assure Deputy Calleary that we will be looking closely at these issues. I thank him for bringing specific instances to our attention, which we will pursue with a view to devising a solution. As he knows, resolving these matters requires more than a stroke of a pen. It involves devising a statutory instrument and rolling it out with the banks, which requires putting the necessary legal agreements in place to allow the banks to operate it.

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