Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We are running short on time. I would like the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste to take particular note of the four aspects of the contribution made by Deputy Donnelly about 20 minutes ago. He mentioned the ECB and its incompetence at various stages to date. He raised the question of the adequacy of the banking union and what its purpose is. Deputy Wallace further developed the point by reference to Wolfgang Muncheou's article that what has been envisaged in the banking union could fall very far short of what is needed. We need more than the political plastering over of the situation that has happened in recent times. There have been large deluges of financial rain and the system has surcharged and then abated. It has not gone away and the fundamental engineering of the banking system with 6,000 banks in the eurozone, is still very weak and has not been addressed.

I believe I gave the Tánaiste or the Taoiseach an article on Deutsche Bank approximately two weeks ago. As admitted by very senior people within Deutsche Bank, there had been an accounting fraud at a level of up to €12 billion at the height of the financial crisis. These banking institutions are quite fragile. They have been plastering over their own fundamental engineering weaknesses. During our Presidency of the European Union in the next six months, we can and should bring these to the top of the agenda. We should be mindful of Deputy Donnelly's final point. We will be careful that all the visitors see the natural comforts of hospitality when they are here and will not be aware of the one in four households whose mortgages are in distress. They need to get tutorials about this when they are here because we will not be in a position to add weight to the argument and justify the case that we need the right dose of financial antibiotics - not a small dose that will fail and will allow the body relapse into economic underperformance. We need a big cortisone injection, which is a big write-down, as nothing less will suffice.

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