Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Much of my objection is to how this frames a relationship with the banks in general, and the different rules that applied to banks, and for that matter, to corporations, because a more general aspect to this is the capacity of private corporations to bring forward losses from previous years. Many people here bought houses just to put a roof over their head at the top of the property bubble, largely created by the banks. They did not do this to make a profit, to gamble, to speculate. If they bought their house for €350,000 or €400,000 and it is now worth €100,000, can they get a write-off on their negative equity against tax liability for future years? They cannot but a bank that helped to bankrupt the country and made astronomical losses, which those very mortgage holders and people on low incomes, all those who have been the victims, bailed out. They provided the resources to give the banks that write-off on previous losses. Ordinary people do not get a write-off against previous losses. I do not accept that is fair.

One question emerged as I listened to the discussion: is this a way of dealing with the possible crisis that our banks face when they are stress-tested again? Is that what this is really about? Is the Government worried, despite constant protestations that we have the best capitalised banks in Europe? Is the rationale for this to use these tax assets to ensure core tier 1 capital ratios? I thought we had fully capitalised banks so why precisely is that an imperative? Let us not forget that the Minister also told us that we would get retrospective recapitalisation of our banks because that was agreed at the meeting in June of last year. Why, if all that is true, we have fully capitalised banks we will get retrospective recapitalisation of them, is Joe soap yet again giving a handout to banks by way of their capacity to write off previous losses against future tax liability? Fairly soon these banks will be sailing off into the sunset again after we have paid for their crisis and will be paying for decades to come. The benefit of what the Minister is doing here will ultimately go to private shareholders. That is bordering on the obnoxious.