Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The letters that summarise the situation of the two so-called pillar banks are OOOC. What do those letters stand for? They stand for "out of operational control". That is my experience. Mr. Joyce has given very good case evidence and I congratulate Ms Blackwell on her contribution to "The Pat Kenny Show" this morning which discussed how after five years as a tenant and having been fully up-to-date on her rent, a lady called Svetlana found herself, her son and her husband locked out because a bank acted without giving any information to her or her family as to why it was locking them out. That is another true story that is about 30 words. We really need to wake up in Ireland. The Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland appeared before the committee last week and I would say he was doing his best but the best is in a fog - a labyrinthine fog that has been left behind that nobody has had the guts to clear up honestly.

The banking losses were not the figure of €64 billion in the domestic banks that we all talk about and that one can see and tot up on balance sheets. If one includes the banks that operated here that were not owned in Ireland like KBC, Danske Bank, Rabobank and Bank of Scotland (Ireland), one can see that the domestic banking sector's losses in Ireland were €135 billion, not €64 billion. That is nearly 70% of our GDP. That is mind-blowing compared to anywhere else on earth in the past 20 or 30 years.