Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail)
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131. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the amount of funding that has been actually drawn down under the Microfinance Programme established by his Department; the amount of funds that were approved or allocated by various institutions under this programme; if he is satisfied that sufficient funds are being drawn down with the level of progress on this matter; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [8127/16]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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Microfinance Ireland was established to administer the Microfinance Fund on behalf of the Government. Its funding comes from a number of sources:

(i)€10m in the form of a Government grant;

(ii) €15m loans in total from the three main banks;

(iii) support via a Guarantee from the European Investment Fund, and

(iv) customer loan repayments.

The latest figures to hand, covering 1 October 2012 to 31 March 2016, show that Microfinance Ireland approved €13,083,000 in loans to Irish micro-enterprises, of which €11,074,000 were drawn down over the same period, and this is estimated to have created and/or maintained a total of some 2000 jobs over that period.

During 2015, in line with the Microenterprise Loan Fund Act 2012, I had the performance of Microfinance Ireland reviewed in detail, and the implementation of changes led to better performance, flexibility and advertising of its products. A key change was the removal of a previous requirement for a micro-enterprise to have been refused a bank loan before recourse to this channel.

The current Board of Microfinance Ireland continues to monitor the risk appetite of the organisation in relation to the level of loan defaults. My Department is represented on that Board and, overall, I am satisfied with the level of engagement and performance of the Fund to date.