Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

When the banks got into trouble it was part of the bailout programme that the Government entered into contractual arrangements with all the banks. They were framework contracts, and interference in commercial decisions by the shareholder is excluded from the powers of the Minister. The Deputy will see the reason for that when he thinks about it. We have to allow the banks make commercial decisions, not political decisions. If we went down that road someone would have to go to their local Deputy before they would get a loan, which is the ultimate abuse of it. Under the terms of the framework document we cannot intervene. The Deputy is being hard on Permanent TSB, PTSB, because it introduced a new product range based on loan to value rates. Its loan to value rates for certain customers are quite attractive, but the purpose of today's meeting is not to examine the practices of any individual bank. We are examining legislation, and I do not believe we should examine the practices of individual banks except in passing.