Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome our visitors. I will take up Deputy Pearse Doherty's point. The €100,000 a year people seem to have been very well protected. The 16% reduction in staff costs was accomplished by a 15.3% reduction in staff numbers. The problem of high pay, to which Deputy Pearse Doherty referred, was not addressed during the year. Page 9 of the presentation shows total impaired loans in the owner-occupier sector are up by €1 billion, or 25%. It might have moderated in the past few months, as 60% of the increase took place in the previous six months, but having €1 billion added over the year does not indicate much progress.

There has been a sharp deterioration in the in buy-to-let sector and three quarters of it occurred this year. It has caused concern in the Seanad that, when buy-to-let people get into difficulty, the solution of the bank is to seek vacant possession in order that those who have paid rent to the landlords face eviction. We have asked the Ministers for Justice and Equality and the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputies Alan Shatter and Phil Hogan, to examine the issue. I would like the bank to confirm that it is not its policy that where the landlord goes bankrupt, the tenant, for whom it is the principal private residence, faces eviction and that it does not insist on vacant possession in these cases. I note with concern that this problem is rising rapidly.

The case studies presented indicate a banking system that was completely irresponsible in its lending. The case mentioned on page 18 refers to someone with an income of €46,000 and debt of €356,000. Are people who engaged in that lending still in the bank? The case mentioned on page 16 involves someone with an income of €38,000 and debt of €331,000. Who was in charge of the ship when it was steering so steadily towards the rocks with this irresponsible lending? That is what the case studies indicate to me. When the Oireachtas gets around to the investigation, I hope the people who lent recklessly will be brought to book. I hope they are all gone from the bank because that explains the situation in which we find ourselves.

The final concern is that, in the era of massive lending, the banking system became fixated on property. In the period 1998 to 2008 under 2% of the increase in lending by Irish banks was in manufacturing and agriculture. The banks went on a property splurge that the two Houses are trying to deal with. Have we any indication that the banking industry will ever know anything about industry and SMEs or is this the local auctioneer, bank manager and property solicitor taking a slight break and hoping the property market starts off again? The Central Bank will have to control the voracious property lending that got the country into so much trouble in the decade before the system blew up in 2008. Do we have people who know anything about entrepreneurship, SMEs or what Irish industry is doing? Most people outside see AIB as purely a property bank, with the others. That is what wrecked the country. AIB did not have anything else in which people were invited to invest.