Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail)
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594. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation her views on the current drawdown levels issued under the credit guarantee scheme; the value of approvals in 2014, 2015 and 2016 by county of each drawdown and approval; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [15479/17]

Mary Mitchell O'Connor (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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The Credit Guarantee Schemes (the original made in 2012, and another in 2015) were operated on behalf of the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation by Capita Asset Services for the first 4 years of its existence and, on 17 October 2016, the role of Operator was assumed by the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland (SBCI) on behalf of the Minister.

As of 24^thFebruary 2017, SBCI advises that, under the Schemes, 427 loans to the value of €68,336,144 had been sanctioned by participating lenders under the scheme. It is estimated that these loans have created or sustained a total of 2,721 jobs in the Irish economy.

However, once the benefit of a credit guarantee is sanctioned and offered to a borrower under the Schemes, not all borrowers proceed to actually draw down the finance available.  A significant number of cases are listed as ‘Pending’ by the participating lenders (the main banks to date), the SBCI has indicated that it does not as of now hold complete information on all such cases and, as a result, it is not possible at present to quantify accurately the drawdowns of loans considered under the scheme.

A breakdown of sanctioned loans by County and Region is provided at A. and B. below. In addition, Quarterly Reports providing full details of the latest Credit Guarantee Scheme performance are published on my Department’s website.

The new Credit Guarantee Scheme 2017, recently launched by my colleague, Mr Pat Breen, T.D., Minister for Employment and Small Business, will be available shortly to our SMEs.  It is my belief that we will see a significant uptake in demand, given that the new Scheme will

- permit me as Minister to take a higher level of risk on finance provided to SMEs;

- enable new financial providers to take part, and;

- allow for the provision of finance to SMEs via products other than bank loans, namely agreements on credit facilities, asset credit facilities and invoice financing facilities.

A. Credit Guarantee Scheme Sanctioned by County

B.Regional Breakdown of the Credit Guarantee Scheme