Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

More generally, does Mr. Sibley accept that there is a problem with the model of banking that we have in Ireland and in most countries at the moment where banking is mostly private and for profit? Even where there are State-owned banks, in reality they are run on that same model which has proven to be problematic, both in terms of the immediate scandals that we end up dealing with here such as mortgages going to vulture funds and the tracker mortgages issue, but also in terms of bigger problems which have cost society a huge amount of money in the last decade or so. I subscribe to the argument that banking should be treated as a public utility. It has many of the features of a utility and it should be regulated and owned as such. How does Mr. Sibley respond to those points?