Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

In earlier exchanges, we heard about the imbalance in development between the east coast and the broad Dublin region, which nowadays extends from Dundalk to Wexford and as far west as south County Kildare. Since the Second World War, a model of local banking used in rural areas and small towns in Germany has provided small and medium enterprises with basic access to capital. Sparkassen has done considerable work in Ireland and recently held a seminar in the RDS explaining the model and the assistance they were prepared to provide. The Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan, is a friend of the German finance Minister, Mr. Wolfgang Schäuble, who is in favour of the Sparkassen model. We are being offered assistance in respect of a type of banking that is not available here. We just spoke about the demise of post offices and difficulties with a number of credit unions. Why not use this golden opportunity to create a financial structure that would service rural areas, particularly small and medium enterprises?

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