Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy O'Reilly for her comments. The advice of the Attorney General is that this is not the place to put such an amendment to primary legislation. That is why we are not supporting it. It is not that we do not support the goal of an interest rate that everybody can manage in accessing funding. This is what the loan process looks to achieve.

It often happens in a debate that people take out one word from a contribution. I referred to "risk" and, to be fair, the Deputy knows what I meant. She is being a little bit smart in trying to change the course of the debate. I refer to the overall cost of the scheme, and when I say it is not for profit, I mean it is not for profit. There is no profit to be made here. Generally, finance of this nature to clients taken on by Microfinance Ireland in the past would have been of high risk, although not in all cases. There is quite a high level of loans that are not repaid, and the taxpayer subsidises them. That is part of our job to give companies a chance to restart. We are prepared to do the same again and put the money in. That does not mean I am saying all the applicants are a high risk, and it is unfair to refer to my comments like that. I am being realistic in referring to the cost of a fund like this.

This type of loan will absolutely continue to be available to start-ups as there will be more of them in future. In 2011, 2012 and 2013, we pumped much money into such start-ups because it was part of the process of creating more jobs. Some people will not be able to get back to the jobs they had and we must get behind them. We must give them a new opportunity, and that is what this fund is for. In the next couple of months it will be for the companies that want to borrow money at low cost to restart or go again. That is what it is for and it is the reason we are making changes. There has been a massive demand and applications have increased tenfold. We want to respond to it.

I should be clear that is only one process.

There are many other interventions from our Department across Government. This is one of them. We will be here every week in the weeks ahead with new schemes, new inventions and new imagination to push out the taxpayer response to help business to grow jobs because all of us want to do that. We all agree on that but this amendment does not belong in primary legislation. That is the argument I am trying to make.

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