Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank colleagues for their contributions. I am very pleased to sponsor the Bill and to have taken responsibility for the legislation when I took office approximately 18 months ago. This is a necessary Bill to assist our small and medium enterprises, SMEs, as best we can. We reviewed the operation of the scheme quite early in its existence and accepted what the independent review indicated regarding the changes that needed to be made to help us achieve the ambitions we had for the SME sector in the context of access to finance. Everybody agrees that the principles of the scheme and as set down in the original legislation were ambitious and were certainly targeted in the right direction in terms of supporting SMEs. Those original ambitions were not realised for a host of reasons, as outlined in the review. We have very much accepted what the review had to say.

Almost 70% of our employment and 90% of companies are in the SME sector. We need to strive each and every day to ensure we provide appropriate vehicles for access to finance for growth. In the first couple of years of the existence of this Government, the challenge was to ensure that there was access to finance at a very basic level for SMEs but the challenge now is to ensure we can finance for growth as SMEs are expanding and our economy is becoming more successful. We need to ensure we have vehicles of this nature, available through the legislation before the House, that are flexible and receptive to the needs of business. We must ensure that we get credit to the businesses that need it when and where they need it.

The emergence of the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland, SBCI, is an important addition to the landscape for SMEs in this country. It is not yet a year in existence but it is performing very well, providing a host of opportunities for businesses to expand. The opportunity to access SBCI finance comes through the pillar banks and we have made important changes in this legislation to broaden a range of products and vehicles covered in the scheme to ensure that risk-sharing is spread. There should be a host of products and vehicles available to our SMEs outside the traditional banking products.

The range of different initiatives we are taking through this legislation on foot of the review we initiated a couple of years ago really will make a difference and make the scheme much more attractive to SMEs. Critically, we have provided a role for SBCI in the legislation to help leverage funding from appropriate EU sources such as COSME, for example, and opportunities that will arise under the Juncker plan and a range of different EU financial instruments. That will help our SME community to create the good, decent and sustainable jobs that everybody in the House wants to see.

I take on board Senator Ó Domhnaill's point about the spread around the country and there is a job of work to be done to promote awareness of the opportunities that will emerge and which are available. The scheme has protected a significant number of jobs and helped to create a large amount of jobs that would not have existed or been maintained in the absence of a scheme such as this. There is always room for improvement, as we acknowledge. We will ensure that this enhanced scheme and the opportunities arising under this legislation will be promoted through the relevant avenues.

I thank my colleagues in the Seanad for the very positive contributions. I look forward to engaging with them again later this week on Committee Stage of the Bill.