Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 22 September 2022
168. Deputy Anne Rabbitte asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the status of the small loan scheme with main banking lenders in Ireland to SMEs that have approval from the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [46472/22]
View answerDuring 2022 the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland (SBCI) have been operating a number of loan schemes for my department that are targeted towards SMEs, including farmers, fishers and small mid-caps.
Some of these loan schemes first require that SBCI approve a business’ eligibility for the scheme before the business can make a loan application to a participating lender.
In 2022, loan schemes requiring SBCI eligibility approval included the Future Growth Loan Scheme, the Brexit Impact Loan Scheme and the Covid-19 Loan Scheme.
The €800 million Future Growth Loan Scheme closed to new applications in early May 2022, as lending capacity had been reached across all lenders.
In addition, one of the lenders to the Brexit Impact Loan Scheme and Covid-19 Loan Scheme, namely Bank of Ireland, notified the SBCI at the end of August 2022 that they are no longer accepting new applications to the Covid-19 Loan Scheme and Brexit Impact Loan Scheme, as they have a sufficient pipeline of applications to reach the limit of the lending capacity allocated to them for the schemes.
However, all other financial providers participating in the Covid-19 Loan Scheme and Brexit Impact Loan Scheme are open to new applications and these lenders are: AIB, Permanent Tsb and Metamo Credit Unions (Access CU, Cara CU, St. Canice’s CU, St. Francis CU, and Savvi CU).
To date, more than 1,600 loans have bee approved to the value of €210 million through the Brexit Impact Loan Scheme and 117 loans have been approved to the value of €8 million through the Covid-19 Loan Scheme. There is close to €100 million in remaining capacity across these schemes up to the end of 2022.
