Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

In justifying the very hard line Bank of Ireland is taking with home owners who are in mortgage distress and in defending his own exorbitant annual income, Mr. Boucher keeps referring to the shareholders of the bank as justification for everything. As a major bank, does he feel it has any responsibility to Irish society more generally in respect of what Bank of Ireland and the other banks have got the Irish people into, or to its customers who were and are the victims of being ensnared in the property bubble, the profiteering that happened there and the prices they were forced to pay for a home? Does he feel that any such consideration should come into the decisions made by Bank of Ireland in regard to home owners who are in distress? From listening to Mr. Boucher on the last occasion and now, my sense is that if we brought in a stone wall from Connemara and placed it over there, I would get as much change from it regarding the interests of people who are suffering and in distress as I am getting from Bank of Ireland and Mr. Boucher as chief executive.