Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I will make a broader point to Deputy Michael McGrath. We support the Bill. We supported the Sinn Féin Bill previously. We think it would potentially give some element of relief to mortgage holders. It does not deal with the fundamentals. The approach in the Bill is to say the issue was market failure whereas the market is the failure in this circumstance. The fundamental problem is that there are banks - including State-owned banks - that are set up to maximise profits. That is what the banks are doing. They are taking losses or are not making as much as they would like in other areas. Therefore, in an area where they think they can get away with it, such as that relating to standard variable rates, they are keeping rates high at a significant rate higher than the European average. Fundamentally, they are acting as profit-maximising companies do and shareholders act as profit-maximising individuals or companies. Is the alternative approach to say that particularly where a large segment of the banking sector is already State-owned, we should have banking that is publicly owned, democratically controlled and used in the interest of society as opposed to society being used and run in the interest of the banks, which is what happens? With a democratically-controlled Central Bank and democratically-controlled banks, we can direct credit to where it is needed in the economy and can ensure that mortgage holders and others are not being ripped off.

What is proposed tinkers around the edge of the problem. It would potentially make some difference and we welcome that. In presenting the thing as a market failure, it ignores the point that the banks are doing what they are set up to do which is to maximise their profits and that is the nature of the problem.