Róisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I also welcome this Bill and thank the Department for its work on it. I wish to draw attention to a number of important issues, the first of which is the need to put the credit unions front and centre in the context of this scheme. We must give people choices other than the big banks. Credit unions are really connected with communities and small businesses and in some cases, they would know them better than a lot of the bigger banks. Credit unions have played a huge part in community life for many years through sponsorship and are run by the people themselves. In that context, I hope the Government emphasises the need for this lending to be accessible through credit unions.

I seek clarity on the maximum interest rate applicable. Can we be guaranteed that it will be capped at a very low rate and will not waver in any way?

I welcome the fact that this is happening because it means that smaller businesses will be able to access low-interest loans with 80% guarantees from the Government, which is a huge help. I hope that some will avail of loans to go greener because that will also save them money. A lot of businesses have huge heating bills and this might be a good opportunity to look at that and switch to an air-to-water system, for example. That would reduce their energy bills and they could use the money saved to pay back the loan. The future is green and we know it makes economic sense. These loans can provide lots of opportunities for businesses to become greener while also saving themselves money.

It is great to see the shops finally reopening today and I hope that everybody sticks to local shops as much as they can and for as long as possible. This will give hope back to those people who have been waiting, in some cases for over a year, to have proper one-on-one customer care and interaction. This is the best aspect of small businesses. One cannot buy online the great care one gets from small businesses or the customer satisfaction one gets from supporting them. I really hope that everybody, including politicians, focuses today on going in to small, local businesses before going to the big chains.