Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Crowley for his opening statement. The statement he submitted stated:

The primary focus should be on improving culture and there is a real risk that the focus on accountability could manifest in a culture of protection rather than of improvement. This could drive an unintended consequence including a focus on avoiding decisions to avoid accountability.

It concluded: "[W]e view the introduction of an individual accountability regime as part of a wider goal to develop the highest possible standards of conduct and culture across the banking sector."

These two quotes sum up what is a very disappointing approach, which I can only say, with regret, proves that bankers just do not get it. I do not think they get it that accountability for actions taken by individuals is the way forward. We have to remember that bankers cost the Irish people billions of euro and hundreds of thousands of people emigrated, whereas we can count on one hand the number of bankers who have faced any sort of a penalty, albeit they were pathetically weak penalties. Yet, ten years on, Mr. Crowley can come in and warn about too much accountability.

This surely is the key issue, not a side issue. Individual accountability must surely be implemented as a key reform. We cannot let the bankers away with blaming culture or collective responsibility. When everybody is responsible, nobody is responsible. I urge the Banking and Payments Federation of Ireland, BPFI, to rethink its approach and to engage in this process. The first thing the federation should do is stop resisting individual accountability and accept that this is the only acceptable way forward.

When we look at it, God knows, senior bankers are paid enough. A full-time worker on the minimum wage earns around €19,000 a year. A banker on a salary of €500,000 earns 257 times that figure, or the earnings in many lifetimes for a worker on the minimum wage. It is only fair that accountability would come with such obscene pay levels. Does Mr. Crowley agree, given that people are being paid enormous amounts of money? What I get in reading his statement is the sense that "We have to be careful we do not have too much accountability." He might tease out that issue.