Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

At the same time, energy costs are rising and there is no problem in getting people to pay. People are being told to leave the turf in the bog and they will be better off. It is absolutely ridiculous.

There are many ridiculous things going on and not one word is being said about them except to let them happen and let the people suffer. The doors in small towns and villages will be shut, the windows will be falling in and the roofs will be falling down and people will be wondering what is happening to rural Ireland. It is happening under our noses. People in rural areas are finding it difficult to survive with all of the regulations.

It is amazing to think the credit unions are before the committee because they want to expand their services and offer more face-to-face services to people while at the same time our pillar banks, which the Government for one reason or another supports through thick and thin and it does not matter a damn they broke the country eight or ten years ago, are going the other way. The credit unions want to offer face-to-face services to local people while the banks are putting boxes in the corners. There is no such thing now as meeting a bank manager. He or she is up in Dublin and the person one speaks to about accessing a loan must write to Dublin and then the response comes back that one is refused.

The banks employ a firm of solicitors to demand more information from the person seeking the loan even though he or she might be looking for only €25,000 or €30,000 to improve or expand the business or employ another person. Who is paying for this? The credit unions want to offer more services but they are being denied and held back by the Central Bank. This is what I believe. In the context of saving our local post offices we have been asking that a form of community banking be made available.

This is operating successfully in many other countries. Germany, which is one of the most efficient and prosperous countries, has more community-led banks than pillar banks. They are operating very successfully, but our Government will not listen to our request to provide community banking in the local post office. It would prefer to close all the post offices down. This is a service that has existed since the foundation of the State and more than half of them are closed. In the next two or three years half of them will be closed and a post office in a village or small town will be a thing of the past.