Nicky McFadden (Fine Gael)

I did not interrupt the Minister of State. The Government begrudges bailing out small businesses that provide revenue and sustain the economy in small villages or towns. This proposal is about keeping small, incidental jobs, not those of big bankers or the Galway tent people about whom the Minister of State has been congratulatory. In addition, he congratulated the Minister for Finance while our country is going down the tubes. This is an outrage.

Two years ago, I spoke in this House about the possibility of setting up a bank for the poor. Mr. Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh won the Nobel Peace Prize having set up a bank for the poor, whereby small businesses such as window cleaning or cleaning businesses would be able to get a small sum of money and be sustainable. Although I suggested this a long time ago, it has fallen on deaf ears. The Minister of State, Deputy Mansergh, was in the House at the time and although he promised to look into it, he never reverted to me about it.

Why should the Minister of State say consistently that one must be positive when so much negativity exists? Were the Government to put in place a system whereby credit could be given to small businesses, one could then be positive. It is to be removed from reality to speak about confidence and being positive in the face of so much heartache in respect of businesses going to the wall. One need only consider the boarded-up shops in any provincial town. One will see streets where windows are empty as shops have departed and formerly thriving businesses have closed down. This is the reason Fine Gael has tabled this motion requesting the Government to set up a loan guarantee system that would help capitalise such small businesses in order that the single jobs that I believe are so important can be retained.