Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I would like to thank the Minister for his comprehensive statement and welcome him and his officials here today for the Estimates meeting.

In his statement the Minister strongly emphasised the positives and there have been positive events in the past 12 months, principally the exit from the troika programme, the National Treasure Management Agency's, NTMA, recent access to the markets, the progress in the public finances and the quarter three figures for employment from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, are particularly positive. There is, however, also a negative side and the country faces significant risks under several headings that the Minister covered in his opening statement. He painted quite a rosy picture on banking whereas several market participants have announced their departure from Ireland. There is a significant lack of competition in banking for personal customers and for small and medium-sized enterprises, SMEs, and even among the banks that the State owns, both Permanent TSB, PTSB, and AIB await approval from the European Commission of their restructuring plans.

There is the major outstanding issue of the liquidation of the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, IBRC, and we await a comprehensive update on how that process is going and what the net impact will be for taxpayers once the loan portfolios are sold on or transferred into the National Asset Management Agency, NAMA. There was no reference to the lack of progress on implementing the agreement made at the June 2012 summit to separate bank debt from national sovereign debt.

The Minister referred to the mortgage arrears crisis and there are signs of increased activity within the banks to try to deal with that problem but progress is far too slow. We need to see greater emphasis on rolling out long-term restructuring of mortgages that are in difficulty. People who need to access the new insolvency service encounter very real difficulty in doing so because of the fees being charged by the personal insolvency practitioners, PIPs, and when their own income levels fall below the guidelines issued as part of that process. NAMA was not discussed although its stress tests for the banks will come up this year. The Department faces major challenges and there are challenges on the wider economic front in 2014. I look forward to discussing the Estimates with the Minister and his officials.