Business Supports
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-29
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Robert Troy (FF), Longford-Westmeath

I could not agree more, and that is something I advocated strongly for when I was a Minister of State in the Department of enterprise in the previous Government. Establishing a new State bank will be fully considered by my Department, including in the context of conducting any necessary further stakeholder consultation. I would like to draw the Deputy's attention to a large number of State supports that are currently in place to help SMEs to access credit. These include the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland, SBCI, Ireland's national promotional bank, which was established in 2014 to deliver financial supports that address failures in the Irish credit market while driving competition and innovation and ensuring the efficient use of available EU resources. The SBCI will have provided about €5 billion in lending to more than 66,000 SMEs to the end of 2026.
I would also point to recent changes to the credit union lending regulations by the Central Bank that are enabling credit unions to lend up to 15% of their assets to SMEs. That is an area in which I see real growth opportunities to support SMEs going forward.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-09-29/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:00:59+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-29