Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I want to speak on the banking union. It is an area which is ultimately the way in which the change Deputy Michael McGrath is referring to will be facilitated. I expect that, at the June or July European Council and the meeting of finance Ministers across that period, we will make greater progress in putting in place the policy framework needed for the realisation of the banking union, which will ultimately lead to banks being more active outside current jurisdictions. I will make two points in that context. A long-term consequence of the banking crisis that we went through is the increased nationalisation of banks. There has been a trend towards banks being refocused in their home market. As the Deputy knows, even in an Irish setting, large banks were required in many cases to divest their presence in international markets, as was the case for Irish banks.

The prospects of that happening for Ireland in terms of new forms of established banks coming in are medium-term prospects. I believe we will see change before then in the area of FinTech, where we will have organisations, which are not retail banks as we know them, playing a more active role in Ireland in providing financial products that are competitive versus our existing banks.

The second point is that the imminence of banking union and the associated regulatory consequences will be apparent soon. The challenges we have with Permanent TSB and the level of non-performing loans are in that context. The bedrock to that now is the existence of a European-wide regulator for banks of a certain scale