Vol. 464 No. 1
32 Mr. Deasy asked the Minister for Enterprise and Employment if he will have arrangements made for the special interest rate of 6.5 per cent which is available to small businesses to be made available to proprietors of private nursing homes who wish to carry out extensions of facilities in view of the demand for places in these homes. [5770/96]
The access to finance scheme which carries a 6.5 per cent subsidised interest rate was created to provide low fixed interest rate loans to the small business sector for the creation of jobs and to increase commercial viability. One of the features of this scheme is that indigenous service industries were included for the first time. Private nursing homes would fall into this general category and are therefore not excluded from the scheme. Such indigenous services must show that displacement will not take place either locally, regionally or nationally (depending on the nature of the project) in order to qualify for a loan. This is done by way of a market impact assessment submitted by the potential borrower to the lending bank.
In addition to providing nearly 50 per cent of the subsidy for the scheme, the administering banks carry all the risk in lending under the scheme and therefore all projects proposed to the banks are subject to normal commercial lending criteria. All sectors are subject to these criteria and loan approval decisions are made by the lending bank.
