i want to congratulate the commissioner on progress achieved
however commissioner you talked about one of the major problems as being access to capital and you mentioned the european investment bank
it has distributed funds to irish banks to distribute on to smes
however a considerable amount is not being distributed mainly because of the mismatch between the needs of smes refinancing of some sort and the european investment bank objective which is money for medium-term investment
so i want to ask you if you agree that some measures need to be put in place for smes which will require refinancing and what role the commission could play
furthermore would you favour some kind of enterprise guarantee scheme similar to what is in the uk
