Businessman gives no credit to the banks

SO AIB will realise a pretax profit of €910m from perpetual bonds (Irish Examiner, June 11), having received part of the €5.5bn taxpayer injection in February, rescuing it and other banks and putting them in a position to ease up on dispensing credit, especially to entrepreneurs like myself.

Yet recently when I, a member of the Irish Crafts Council, applied for €15,000 start-up loan to promote my hand-embroidered textiles, AIB, as well as Bank of Ireland demanded liquid security as collateral, notwithstanding the fact that Bank of Ireland holds my home mortgage which, please be assured, is not toxic.

If I had liquid security, why would I approach a bank in the first place?