Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

About a year ago. The finance area provides a great temptation to misbehave for people without character. It is also an area where boards can fall asleep on the job and it is the area where regulators fell asleep. What we need now is clear and transparent supervision and inspection. We need a visible system, like that in hotels or restaurants where a sheet of paper goes up on the wall of the bathrooms covering every hour of the day and the person inspecting signs his or her initials on the sheet guaranteeing the bathroom has been inspected and is working properly. We need the equivalent system in our financial institutions. This is not something complex, but does require character.

The legislation before us provides an operational and technical passage for shoring up this loss and trying to fund it. It is appalling that a 2% levy is being applied to provide €65 million a year for ten years. This is just as appalling as previous cases mentioned, such as the PMPA and the Insurance Corporation of Ireland.

It behoves us as a Parliament to insist that the operational areas that look after banks, insurance companies and anything to do with finance are properly regulated. Not only must the rules and procedures be set out, they must be inspected, supervised and evidenced, with nobody being put under any embarrassment to do their work. It is with a sad and heavy heart that I commend this Bill be passed. I commend it in order that 1,600 jobs are protected and because there is an operational base to running an insurance company. It is shocking that a busted bank has to form a partnership with Liberty Mutual to maintain this business. There is perhaps merit in considering whether it might have been best to nationalise all the financial institutions temporarily in order that we could draw back the curtains to get a full and fresh view and an injection of new people transparently.

It is tragic that somebody even dared to think to make an application for salary levels in AIB to be in excess of €500,000. That is breathtaking and absurd.

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