Nicky McFadden (Fine Gael)

The positive announcement on Monday shows the IDA is always plugging away trying to source new jobs for Ireland. It shocked me that county enterprise board funding was cut by 35%. We need to support small businesses more than ever and to create new small businesses. I am incredulous that we are cutting enterprise boards to such a degree. Small businesses are the bread and butter or the mainstay of our country. Small businesses exist in every single town and village in the country and they keep communities alive. County enterprise boards represent these voiceless people and provide advice to them. In the Westmeath area the county enterprise board runs programmes attended by over 800 people per year. It runs over 60 programmes and represents craft businesses, food businesses and engineering businesses. I must reiterate and explain how important these are to the community. They provide valuable services to the Westmeath and Longford area.

Enterprise Ireland focuses on exports. County enterprise boards support those who have fewer than ten jobs in the business. Our family business is a pet shop that employs two people. We are on our knees and if it was not for my sister's husband, who has a decent job, we would have closed the business. It is about hanging on and that is where county enterprise boards come in. They give advice and ideas to people on how to retain business.

The most extraordinary statistic in the global economic survey report was that 90% of small businesses employ fewer than ten people. A total of 2,500 SMEs employ 800,000 people, a staggering figure. I have known this in my heart and this survey supports my theory.

This leads me to the outrage that is our banking institutions. I warmly welcome the possibility of a merger between Permanent tsb, the EBS and other smaller banks. If the two larger banks, Allied Irish Banks and Bank of Ireland, are pushed to one side, the proposed conglomerate might be more willing and able to support small business. More than half of SMEs have been refused funding. Some were told following an initial telephone call or meeting that they need not complete an application for credit because they will be refused. That is an outrage when one considers the billions of euro we have put into supporting the banks.

Senator Butler requested us to come up with solutions. The banks should be instructed and we should have this control and power when the Oireachtas and NAMA are supporting them to tell them what to do and how to support small business which are the mainstay of the State. The banks say they approve nine out of every ten loan applications but most SMEs cannot even get to the stage of completing an application form because they have been told by their bank manager that they need not apply. That statistic is disingenuous.

I attended a meeting of Westmeath County Council yesterday. The council debated the jobs that need to be carried out around the county and the fact nobody is available to do the work because of the public service recruitment embargo. One councillor asked why all the people who are signing on cannot be put on a community employment, CE, scheme and encouraged to work in local authority areas. I acknowledge this could raise industrial relations issue with unions and so on but there are ways around this. FÁS through CE schemes gave a fantastic start to many people in the past. FÁS was the provider of CE schemes in the past and I cannot see why this cannot be done again. It is Fine Gael policy to introduce more of these schemes. For example, they could be established to employ people to improve the shorelines of Lough Ree and Lough Ennell, to paint buildings and so on. So much work could be done.

There are three ways to create jobs and I would like the Minister of State, in particular, to comment on cutting 35% of the county enterprise board budget.