Written answers

Tuesday, 23 May 2017

Department of Finance

Small and Medium Enterprises Supports

Photo of Niall CollinsNiall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail)
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174. To ask the Minister for Finance the number of SME loans given by financial institutions in 2016; the number of these that were non-performing; the value in monetary terms; and the number of SME loan requests that were refused in 2016. [24074/17]

Photo of Michael NoonanMichael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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The Department of Finance does not have access to loan or firm level credit data. However, the Central Bank of Ireland’s SME Market Report which is published on their website aims to collate information from a range of internal and external sources to give an up-to-date picture of developments in the Irish small and medium enterprise (SME) credit market.

The report provides information on credit demand, credit access, loan terms and conditions, loan default, interest rates and credit market concentration. The report is released twice yearly. The Central Bank also publishes a quarterly statistical release entitled Trends in Business Credit and Deposits.

According to the latest report gross new lending to non-financial SMEs totalled €4.6 billion in 2016 representing a 35% increase on 2015.

In relation to non-performing loans, the Central Bank reported that SME default rates have consistently fallen. By share of outstanding balances, the default rate has declined from 41 per cent in 2013 to 24 per cent in June 2016. Overall SME debt has fallen considerably and declined for the 21st consecutive quarter in Q4 2016 to stand at €28.1 billion. This represented an annual decrease of 11.7 per cent.

With regard to rejection rates, the latest Department of Finance SME Credit Demand Survey for the period April to September 2016 reported that 16% of SMEs that applied for credit were rejected. It should be noted that only 23% of SMEs applied for credit during that period.

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