Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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167. To ask the Minister for Finance the number of companies and-or SMEs from outside the State that have been granted guarantees and-or risk sharing facilities under the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland in the past two years to date; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [46619/18]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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The Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland (SBCI) is Ireland’s national promotional institution. The SBCI’s goal is to increase the availability of appropriately priced, flexible funding to viable Irish SMEs. The SBCI uses an on-lending model. This means it does not lend directly to SMEs. The SBCI works with both banks and non-bank finance providers providing low cost liquidity and guarantees. The SBCI currently has seven on-lenders, three banks and four non-bank finance providers.

Since it began its operations in March 2015, to the end of March 2018, there has been €972 million of SBCI supported lending, supporting over 24,000 SMEs and 129,300 jobs. The SMEs who received SBCI finance are from all sectors of the Irish economy and have a wide geographical spread, with approximately 85% of loans going outside Dublin and 26% of loans going to the Agriculture sector.

The SBCI has not granted guarantees or risk-sharing facilities to any SMEs from outside the State in the past two years to date. Both the Brexit Loan Scheme and the Agriculture Cashflow Support Loan Scheme, which are the SBCI’s current risk-sharing guarantee schemes in operation at present, require the beneficiary to be established and operating in the State. The SBCI is seeking to develop its risk-sharing guarantee product offering in 2018, including with the current development of the Future Growth Loan Scheme, which was announced in Budget 2019.