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

It was remiss of me at the outset not to thank the Ceann Comhairle and all of the Deputies, mainly from the Opposition to be fair, who agreed to facilitate the quick progress of this legislation through the Houses. The legislation did not have to go through the full committee procedure and that has assisted in its speedy progress. I thank everyone for their assistance in that regard. I accept that it is not something that we should do too often. We have tried to limit it, although I did write to the Ceann Comhairle a few weeks ago about another Bill but that was related to a Supreme Court decision. Deputies will appreciate that we do not overdo it. I totally value the scrutiny that committees bring to the legislative process. Having been on committees for many years, I know that they perform an essential role. We should always enable committee scrutiny where possible. When we do not do it, we do offer full engagement with ourselves and officials to try to tease through all of the issues. I hope that goes some way towards alleviating Members' concerns. I appreciate that for Opposition Deputies, not having the full scrutiny at committee can be difficult but it has helped us to bring this Bill forward tonight. We hope to get it signed before the end of May and to get this money into the system in June. That is our commitment to the House.

Concern was expressed that the Government is not engaging enough with the business and agricultural communities that will be accessing these funds but I assure the House that the Government does that every day, practically. The Tánaiste, the Minister of State, Deputy Troy, the officials and I engage with businesses of all sizes and shapes all over the country. Likewise, the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine and the Ministers of State, Deputy Heydon and Senator Hackett, are engaging with the various stakeholders in that space. We react to their needs and try to respond to them and this Bill is part of that response. We are bringing forward a product that we believe will be of more use to them. There are longer terms, it is available to primary producers, it has been extended from three to six years and the requirement to show innovation has been dropped. There is also an open, competitive call not just for banks but for other lenders, including credit unions, to come forward to administer the scheme and make products available.

Deputies asked that we would continue to engage, which we will do. The monitoring of these loans and their drawdown is done by the SME and State Bodies Group, along with many others. There will be scrutiny by this House and the Credit Review Office will make sure that the banks are operating the scheme fairly. Again, it is an open, competitive call and the SBCI and the Government will scrutinise that. Those who want to administer the scheme will have to show that they are willing to apply it to those for whom it is designed. The objective is to make products available at much lower interest rates than currently available. That is what is happening with all of the other schemes. I can go through the details if necessary but all of the credit guarantee schemes being offered so far are 4% down. The majority of the 3,700 loans drawn down are in the 2.5% to 3% category, which is a reduction of between 2% and 4% on almost every other product out there under the credit guarantee. That is the proper application. I wish, as does everyone else, that our banks could make money available for even less but there is a cost to administer the loans. There is a cost to the State in terms of the risk to money. In addition, our banks operate under very strict rules regarding their capital reserves, which are different from those relating to many other European banks as a result of what happened in this country a number of years ago. We must respect that and the fact that there are reasons for it. The credit unions are not able to operate like the banks but they are clearly involved in this as well.

Concern was expressed that the legislation is being rushed through and cannot be scrutinised properly. All of the loan products we have to offer, all of the business products and all of the different interventions are available on our website for full scrutiny or through the local enterprise offices. I am happy to sit down with Deputy Connolly or any other Deputy and go through the various schemes that are available. There are lots of schemes and offers out there. I totally accept, as do the Tánaiste, the Department and everyone in government, that they do not go the whole way in terms of replacing every lost euro, lost profit or lost wage packet. They are an assistance towards the cost of doing business and trying to survive during Covid and Brexit and be in a position to continue trading thereafter. The taxpayer cannot step in fully to cover all costs. As I have said on many occasions in this House and in Seanad Éireann, the responses to Brexit and Covid mean that many businesses will have to do a combination of drawing down State supports, grants and wage subsidies, tapping into their reserves as well as doing financial planning and using some longer term financial products. This product is over six years, which stretches the repayment capacity of businesses and it is at much lower interest rates. I would encourage as many companies as possible to avail of these schemes while the framework is there. This one runs to December 2022, while the framework for the credit guarantee scheme will run until the end of this year.

We encourage companies to avail of these and we can respond to that demand. While this scheme is for €330 million of lending, if demand exceeds that, we can respond and introduce more lending. It is not capped in that respect. We will come back to this House to secure permission to do that.

I was asked why this money is available now when it was not available to build houses a couple of years ago. This is exactly the point we have been trying to make for a long number of years. We did not have access to finance to build houses ten or 11 years ago. I wish we did because if we had access to finance, we would have drawn it down and built houses and we would not have the supply issue we have now.

Thankfully, coming into Covid-19 and Brexit, our public finances were in order, thanks to much of the work done by the previous two Governments to ensure we got our public finances in order. Deputy Howlin was very much involved in that process. That means we can step up to help businesses and increase our expenditure because of Covid-19 to approximately €40 billion. It also means we are part of a European credit guarantee fund which enables us to help business and many other sectors because our finances are in order.

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