Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank the PBFI representatives for their presentation. We spent a good deal of the last Dáil term looking at and talking about the Sparkasse and Kiwibank models. The issue came up many times at this committee and on the floor of the Dáil, including through questions to the Minister for Finance. We had some very energised debates about whether it could work and the Government committed to looking at it and examining it closely, which it did. The Minister, Deputy Donohoe, published a report on the issue in July which concluded that there was no compelling case for the State to establish a new local public banking system. It found that the cost to the Exchequer for the proposed new model was an estimated minimum of €170 million and that the assumptions in the proposal based on costs, interest rates and loan attrition rates "appear challenging". When I read this, I nearly fell down laughing at the idea that we could not support a public banking sector to the tune of €170 million when we have just thrown €64 billion at AIB and the rest of the banks. I am sure that the reaction of representatives of PBFI was the same. In that context, it is disingenuous for other Deputies to say that this proposal is too late and that Ireland is a different country that does things differently and has a different culture. We do have a very different culture. We have had the biggest bank bailout in history and have refused the Apple tax that is due to us of at least €13 billion.

I fully support Mr. Maye's contention that it is not too late and that we should look at this proposal. I would like to know what he thinks of the Government's report. I would be very critical of the fact that the Minister for Finance released this report in July, during the Dáil recess.

It tells everybody in the country that the final nail is going into the coffin of the post office because what we have seen is just the beginning of the closure of our post offices. This proposal was a way to help us step away from that and to be fair to the Irish people, farmers and small businesses and give them a way to borrow at a decent, realistic and humane rate, as people can do in Germany, New Zealand and elsewhere. Will the witnesses give their response to the report they saw in July?