Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the delegates for attending today's meeting. These meetings can often be bruising encounters. I had to leave the meeting earlier to speak in the Dáil but I have read Mr. Fielding's presentation.

In Mr. Sheridan's view, is the right legislation, tools and capacity in place? The McKinsey study carried out in the 1990s looked at European banking. It concluded that Irish banks were the most profitable, if not in the world, in Europe. In his remarks, Mr. Fielding cited a report from October 2004 by the Wall Street financiers which indicated that Irish banks were making three times the profit of other European banks. A European Commission report from 1997 concluded that there was cartel activity operating in the Irish banks. We obviously have a long and regrettable history of Irish banking activity in this country over the past few decades. Various reports from multiple sources, all of which are credible, suggest that Irish banks make more money from Irish citizens and businesses than do other banks in comparable countries and that this has been the case for a long time, including in the mid-1990s. According to the European Commission it was going on in the late 1990s and according to the Wall Street financiers it was going on in the 2000s.

I appreciate that Mr. Fielding's job is, as set out in his opening remarks, to find the right balance. Another phrase used by him in his opening remarks is that "charges should be reasonable and appropriate". If one compares what Irish consumers, citizens and businesses are being charged relative to consumers, citizens and businesses in other countries, charges are not reasonable and appropriate. One of two things would appear to be wrong. Either the legislation is insufficient and the delegations, their teams, the Regulator and Governor do not have sufficient authority from the Oireachtas to achieve real competitiveness as benchmarked against other countries or they do have that authority but are not using it properly. Something is wrong if Irish citizens, consumers and businesses have been consistently over at least two decades charged several times more than the European average. Perhaps the delegates would give their view on whether they believe they have the legislative tools and capacity necessary and, if they do, why this consistent trend continued over several decades.