John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I would say to both Mr. Hayes and Mr. Carthy that when legislation is proposed in this House and it smacks of anything to do with banking, regulation or whatever, it goes to the ECB for its views and it reports back to us. Here we have a banking scandal in, separately, Ulster Bank and, collectively, all of the other banks and the ECB tells us it is not within its remit and that it is within the remit of the Central Bank. It is damn well within its remit because it is a banking standard issue. I would encourage both witnesses not to let it get away with that.

I want to link that to another issue before Mr. Hayes comes in.

Back in the days of the collapse of the economy, Jonathan Sugarman, who reported in some way to the European Union, raised the issue of the controls within the Italian bank for which he worked. I believe a very senior individual from the European Union was a director of that bank at the time. In spite of making the formal complaint, nothing ever happened. When I attended with him at the Central Bank recently to make the complaint and find out what was happening and get its response, it made every effort to close him down and to close down that meeting. I will deal with that when its representatives come before us again. The Central Bank said it was one incident but he said it was not just one incident. He said that over a long period of time there were a number of breaches of the regulation and that he was told by that bank not to make another complaint to the Central Bank. As an employee he was forced not to do it, and everyone disregards that. That is a very bad reflection on the European Central Bank. It undermines the regulation to think that that individual told the guards and the Central Bank: "I am here. I have broken the rules." He should have been arrested and the bank charged, but nothing happened. I am asking the witnesses, as Members of the European Parliament, what they think of that. How do they protect that man's rights?