The Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise Mary Coughlan has told an Oireachtas Committee that by May this year her department had received 36,000 applications for redundancy payments. She said last year there were 40,000 applications for the entire year.
The Tánaiste said that 19 extra staff have been re-assigned into the redundancy section, and that the department's overtime budget was also being used in the redundancy section.
Meanwhile, the Small Firms Association has claimed that not one Irish bank has drawn down money being made available through the European Commission for small and medium-sized companies.
The SFA has renewed a call for direct intervention by the Government to establish its own loan guarantee scheme for small businesses.
The SFA also published its quarterly business credit survey today. The survey was conducted during May and 584 companies responded. 25% of respondents said that they had experienced decreased availability of working capital in the last three months, whilst 42% had stayed the same and 3% had experienced increased availability.
