Dáil debates

Wednesday, 15 December 2010

Credit Institutions (Stabilisation) Bill 2010: Second Stage

 

5:00 pm

Photo of Ned O'KeeffeNed O'Keeffe (Cork East, Fianna Fail)

I thank Deputy Morgan. It was not the Bank of Ireland and AIB that caused the problem. An individual came here from the United Kingdom, Mr. Mark Duffy. He brought the Bank of Scotland into the Irish market. He gave 100% mortgages to the Irish people. He could not give out enough money. No one has said anything about him. We have heard all sorts of things from the Labour Party and from Fine Gael but no one has mentioned him in this House at all at all since 2008. He was the man who destroyed the banking system in this country. He came into the finance committee and told us what we should and should not do. Bank of Scotland is gone with a trail of financial destruction left behind and Mark Duffy has gone and he has not been arrested.

We are talking about other Irish people who did nothing wrong being forced into competition. Competition destroyed our banking system and foreign banks in our land. We have foreign people telling us what to do. We have a regulator who was Garret FitzGerald's financial adviser in 1984-87 and what did he do? He doubled the national debt. He talks the talk, he goes to dinners and tells us what to do but he is a professor, he never bought a pig's head in his life; if he had, he would know what life is about.

We have only two banks on this island and we have no banking system and no country can afford not to have a banking system. Every country in the European Community will have a bank in its own nationality. New Zealand went down the road many years ago of deregulation and still to this day does not have a banking system and it regrets that every day. I meant to go to New Zealand this year but because of restrictions on this House and economics and cutbacks and publicity I did not.

If I was in charge of the banking system as Minister for Finance, I would have put a business banking task force in place of people like O'Brien of O2 and Alan Dukes, who is not a bad guy, and I would have Denis O'Brien and the stockbroker of NCB, Dermot Desmond, along with Pat Farrell of the Irish Banking Federation. I would have put five practical, common sense people on a bank task force. Then we would have business and we would not be running around with bank guarantees and bad banks and good banks. We do not know where we are going and the people of Ireland are fed up with us because banking has destroyed this Government and this Minister for Finance has let it rip, rip, rip. I have told him so and I commented publicly in 2008 when he got the job. If I had gotten that job in 2008, my first task in my first month would have been to make a plan. No plan was put in place, nothing was done and the economy was on the down. It was done by McCreevy and other Ministers and now we are depending on foreign banks to rescue us. Corrective action should have been taken.

This legislation must go before the Supreme Court before it can be enacted. It is the most serious and draconian legislation that has ever come in here, even the Special Powers Act was not as dominant and dangerous to the Irish people as this legislation. Tomorrow morning our two banks can be sold off at the stroke of a pen. We are being told they must be sold. What are we going to do? I say that we cannot manage without an Irish bank and I am looking at the Minister of State, who is a good friend of mine and I ask if we are going to depend on the HSBCs, the Barclays, the Standard Chartereds, the Credit Suisses? They just laugh at us.

Side by side with that, we can look at what has happened with Lehmans in New York, and Bear Stearns, and what happened in other countries, where they put their houses in order. American banking is not as bad as it was. There are two banks in Britain, Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds and they have no problems. We do not have any leadership in banking. That is the problem.

The sooner we put our House in order and put our structure right, then we will be in business, but it has not happened and no one has a formula. I mentioned credit unions and I mentioned selling off the banks. We will rue the day we sold the banks. In Irish history, we will never forget it and I say that as a genuine Irishman. We have more foreigners running our banks now that we will get so bad we will be looking for Brian Boru to drive them out again.

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