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

The Senators are leaving for a vote in one of the Houses but they will return. I put it to Mr. Draghi that we must learn from history and our mistakes. At one session here we had an employee from an Italian bank, Mr. Jonathan Sugarman, and I know Mr. Draghi is familiar with him. The case was put in the European Parliament by Mr. Luke "Ming" Flanagan and perhaps others. It was never seen that Mr. Sugarman was acknowledged in any way for bringing forward the serious wrong-doings in that bank. Nobody knows publicly whether it was addressed. For all and sundry looking at this, it appears the honest whistleblower working with appropriate legislation and reporting a bank with sizable difficulties was ignored.

The issue of bondholders was raised. Bondholders are in the business of taking risk and they apply an interest rate based on the kind of risk they take. Why would they not be burned, or at least a certain number of them? We are talking about Irish banks and we can see their profitability today. It will perhaps be €1.5 billion in two cases when the final figures come out. They are certainly at a high level of profitability. I acknowledge we have had help from Europe and the argument is that we must repay that trust. The question now is if there is a policy of "together we are stronger", we must consider the people. We must go beyond the institutions that the Government in Ireland, both at that time and since, as well as the EU have helped. We must consider how to help the individual citizen in these states.

Our immediate problem is that the banks are almost outside of control, I am afraid to say. They are making their money and selling non-performing loans while blaming Europe for that. They are selling to vulture funds that are not regulated. I understand from a recent exchange with some European Union officials that it intends to introduce a form of regulation similar to what we have in Ireland, which is essentially light-touch regulation for vulture funds. Meanwhile, ordinary Irish citizens and others living in this country are being thrown out of their homes. Thousands of acres of Irish agricultural land is now held by vulture funds. As a result of what happened way back then, we are still paying a price. We speak about the recovery and we have seen a certain amount of recovery going on around us but it has not benefitted a significant number of people who are still finding it difficult to put their lives back together again.

There are Central Bank rules about credit and reporting and this has affected the ability of small businesses to raise money. Deputies Michael McGrath and Pearse Doherty and others have raised the question of the interest rates. Mr. Draghi has argued interest rates are a function of the banking market, with rates being reduced according to competition. There is so much bad debt in banks arising from the crash that they will not reduce rates. They could do it because of the amount of money they make but we can see them throwing people out of their homes and dragging them, kicking and screaming, through the courts in Ireland. No society should tolerate that.

We look to the Central Bank and the European Central Bank to acknowledge in some way the plight of ordinary people faced with difficulties in their lives. They are part of the European Union and they deserve to be recognised and supported by the Union and the Irish Government. It is a real difficulty here that there is no competition between banks because of what happened in the past and the interest rates are not right because of that. People in their homes are now being threatened because of past events and the system seems to want to ignore them. It would be unfair not to bring all of that to Mr. Draghi's attention today. The European Central Bank may not have the power to deal with all that but I must say to Mr. Draghi on behalf of the people I represent that they are not experiencing as much of a recovery as the European Union tells them is happening. It is not happening. The banks here are a disgrace.

I am sure Mr. Draghi is familiar with the tracker mortgage issue. It is outrageous how banks ripped off the ordinary people in this country who were their customers but they are still dragging their heels to this day, refusing to recognise the plight of people and the position in which they have put people.