Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I seem to be unlucky in that whenever the committee is discussing something in which I have an interest, there are also questions in the Dáil that have relevance for me. It is hard to be in two places at once. In respect of the current dormant accounts, the obligation first is to find the owner. It is only in the event of the bank not being able to find the owner that there is any question of it being transferred. The second principle that has always existed is that the money always belongs to the owner if he or she turns up. This is taken to the point of nonsense, in that the State sees all of the dormant account money that has ever been handed over to it as a current liability. There are two chances of all of that being reclaimed: none and none. The amazing thing is that the net inflow every year is approximately €20 million. That is reclaimed versus money coming in. There is, therefore, no chance of all the people ever turning up to claim their money. We are not here to discuss dormant accounts but those two principles are of relevance.

My understanding is that deposit boxes go back to the beginning of the 19th century. If it is money and we know who owns it, we know what to do with it; we give it back to the owner. That is in black and white. If it is goods and we know to whom they belong, the same principle applies. We may take it as a certainty that if we opened every box between 1800 to 1900, there would not be anybody alive who put anything in a box. We would be talking about heirs and descendants, probably at a fair degree of removal at this stage. Allowing that we can match it up for them to get their property back, they might not want to leave it in a deposit box but they might not realise it is there. We would decide using the same principles we have used elsewhere. If an artefact is found that is over a certain age, the State has a claim on it anyway. If I find a golden chalice on my land, unfortunately I do not get to own it. Even though I bought the land and everything in the land, despite what I thought, I do not own everything, depending on what is found under the land or in the property. That principle is well established.

If we started at 1800 and stopped at 1900, on the issue of privacy, we have published the 1911 census. There was a question when people wanted us to move forward faster in terms of people being alive who are mentioned in censuses and so on. We have decided that, even though census documents are confidential, they can be made public, and they have been made public up to 1911. We have all found our own relatives in them and discovered all sorts of interesting facts we did not know. In our family, we found that Seán Ó Cuív, my grandfather, filled out the census form in Irish but spelled our name phonetically in a simplified Irish: C-U-I-B. He carried that to the nth degree.

Let us presume we go in and open every box, starting at 1800 and working up through the years. If we find money and find the owner, we give it back. If we find articles and find the owner, we give them back. Supposing we find very interesting artefacts akin to what we might find in museums or whatever, which do not compromise anybody or any family. They could be lent to the State and put on display but that they would still belong to the owner if he or she ever turned up. In that case, we are not transferring ownership but putting them display. We would take a little liberty with the property but not transfer the ownership. In Kilmainham or any of those places there are artefacts on permanent loan. They do not have to be owned. Assuming more current boxes were not opened - I suspect it would be a long time before we would get to 1900 - by keeping it back in the very distant past and only putting items of national interest on display without transferring ownership - would that pose a huge problem?

If this area were covered by legislation, there would be a lot of good for the State. There could be interesting documents or artefacts that could give a much wider understanding of our history.

It would show us some probably beautiful items that have been hidden away. There is probably a Caravaggio, a Rubens or something else there. It would be an awful pity not to have it on display. Owners can come to collect if they can prove their ownership.

If that is the way it is done and deposit boxes of a much more recent vintage are not opened and publicly displayed, and a committee is set up to adjudicate whether certain standards and criteria were followed, would Mr. Connolly foresee problems, if it was legislated for? I have heard about Article 43 all my life in politics. I have never understood the interpretation that was imputed to the article by the courts regarding private ownership. It always seemed that the right to private ownership was being taken as absolute whereas the Constitution is clear that it is subject to the exigencies of the common good. I always remember when we had to make decisions in this House curtailing rights to property, etc., relating to wages, pensions and such during the recent financial crisis. The legislation stated that there was a right to private ownership but it was not absolute and it could be curtailed if it was outweighed by the common good. By not transferring ownership, only using a loan and doing that judiciously, I often wonder what challenge could arise. In one of the documents, Mr. Connolly mentioned a jewelled sword. Supposing a jewelled sword turns up and one puts it on display as something valuable and interest from the Crimean War, a dress sword, the Battle of Waterloo or an award for gallantry or such, if the family turns up and says it is theirs, what complaint could they have since they would never have found out it was there in the first place?

We have become paranoid in the State about challenges. I take the view that we took as a House in 2010 that one weighs up the circumstances and says that if somebody wants to challenge it, it is fine, but very unlikely. It was proven to be unlikely in 2010 and did not happen. If constructed properly, it would prove unlikely in this case as well. The principles should be not to transfer ownership of any artefacts, because one cannot replace them, but just put them on display; start with the oldest ones first and work forward so that nobody alive will be affected one way or another, and the depositor can never come back to say he or she deposited it on the basis that it would never be opened, because he or she does not exist any more; if the owner is found, he or she gets it immediately; and if the owner cannot be found but subsequently turns up because it was put on display, he or she gets it, which means that it has been an advantage to their property rights because he or she gets property that he or she would not have known existed.

That leaves one question that seems to worry banks. I thought banks were full of money but they are worried about the cost of all of this. If this is done judiciously and carefully, it might not be that much of a cost and if there is a cost to either the State or the banks, that is something that one would work out as one goes along. There is a matter of corporate responsibility. Agencies spend much money on corporate responsibility, goodwill, advertising, sponsoring sports and such. Older banks with older deposits could generate a lot of goodwill by doing this if it was done properly.

There is a separate issue that has nothing to do with the debate, which we can put aside. That is the regulation of safe deposit boxes from here on, because that has become a private industry. People who go to them are going to non-regulated entities. It is an interesting question, since it has moved away from the banks, of how safe all these deposit houses are. I do not know but it is nothing to do with this so we will leave that to the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach.