Survey to examine credit for small firms

THE GOVERNMENT is surveying demand for credit from small and medium-sized businesses in a bid to fine tune policies designed to ensure that the sector gets the funding it needs from banks and other institutions.

Claire Dunne, assistant general secretary of the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation told an Oireachtas committee yesterday that the Government has commissioned a survey designed to establish what level of demand there is for credit from small and medium-sized firms and whether or not the banks are meeting this.

She told the Committee on Jobs, Social Protection and Education that the Department of Finance has commissioned the survey, which will focus solely on collecting information from small and medium-sized businesses.

“That process is now in train and we should have results from that in early November,” she said. Ms Dunne added that the results will be used to tailor existing Government policy in this area to the sector’s needs.

The Government has commissioned the survey because the last quarterly report from the State’s Credit Review Office suggested that demand for credit from small business is low. However, lobby groups such as the Small Firms’ Association (SFA) maintain that the banks have tightened the purse strings and are not meeting demand from business.

Ms Dunne said that it would be unacceptable if banks that have been recapitalised with taxpayers’ money were not providing credit to viable businesses and employers.

Earlier yesterday, SFA chairman, Ian Martin, told the association’s annual conference in Dublin that access to credit is the biggest challenge facing small business at the moment.

Mr Martin said the association welcomed enterprise minister, Richard Bruton’s decision to introduce a Government small and medium-sized enterprise credit guarantee scheme.