The CEO of Chambers Ireland has said an EU credit scheme, which makes funding of €350m available to Irish businesses, is not being properly pushed by the banks in charge of administering it.
Ian Talbot was speaking before the Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade & Employment, which is considering the financing of Irish business.
Mr Talbot said he believed one of the problems was that bank branches simply do not know enough about the Competition and Innovation Framework programme to encourage clients to apply for it.
He said he was finding it hard to get statistics from the banks about the scheme.
However, Mr Talbot said that because the scheme specifically targets expansion and innovation, it may not be relevant to most enterprises in Ireland, which are more concerned about consolidating their business rather than expanding it and are therefore not likely to be eligible for the funding.
Meanwhile, a survey by ISME has found that almost 50% of small to medium-sized Irish businesses have introduced pay cuts so far this year by an average of 13%.
The survey found that 45% of companies cut pay while 49% are implementing pay freezes.
Half of the 2,000 companies surveyed have also reduced working hours for staff and over one in four said they intend to make redundancies in the next three months.
