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

We have a letter from Ms Danièle Nouy on the Single Strategic Mechanism, SSM, and so on. We attempted to get her to come to a committee meeting. Separately, as Mr. Hayes knows - we thank him for his help - we invited Mr. Draghi, but it is almost impossible to get them to come here. One would imagine that there would be far greater interaction between these individuals and committees such as this and I find it disappointing that they do not see such interaction as being important. We are holding out for Mr. Draghi's attendance in a few weeks' time, but we have not yet received a response. We did not receive a timely response from Ms Nouy. Deputy Joan Burton raised the issue, for example. Representatives of Sparkasse bank in Germany have been here with us and we are going to meet them at some stage in the near future. They have expressed an interest in encouraging credit unions and post offices to join them in providing for a community banking model, which I favour. They told us that the bank offers mortgage rates of 1.2% and that it is still offering tracker mortgages. It is a possibility. I am wondering what encouragement Mr. Hayes can give or are there obstacles within the European Union that make it more difficult for the bank to set up and credit unions to perform.