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

I am interested in the answer to Deputy Pat Rabbitte's question. We will obviously hear what Professor Honohan has to say, but it strikes me that we are being told the money will be given back, but only after A, B, C, D and E have been done. It is similar to the Greek situation. It seems that a great deal of pain will have to be inflicted on many people in order to ensure this money is given back. That is just a comment.

I would like to ask a question about the Consumer Protection (Regulation of Credit Servicing Firms) Bill 2015, with which we dealt yesterday. Can Professor Honohan see any purpose, value or positive contribution vulture funds have in a well functioning financial sector in this or any other economy? I cannot see that there is. We are now seeking to regulate them to some extent, but there are question marks over whether we are doing it well enough. I wonder whether we should be regulating them out of business completely. I do not see what value they add to anything. We can set aside ideological differences we might have about whether banking should be public or private and so on. That is one debate. These vulture funds do not have a long-term commitment to a market, customers or anything else. Given that Professor Honohan has said his objective is to have a well functioning financial sector - that should be the objective of any central bank - does he agree that we should be regulating vulture funds completely out of business?