Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

Ulster Bank is a no-show this afternoon. Ulster Bank has more than 1 million customers and 3,000 employees. It is very poor form not to come in to answer parliamentarians' questions. What about the 1 million customers and the 3,000 workers? They have questions they want answered. Not only are their questions unanswered, the entity of which they are to be asked has not even shown up. It is a disgrace. I am not personally insulted but I think the customers and the workers have every right to feel that way.

This is a bank which has done very well from ordinary people in this country and the efforts of its workforce. The figures Mr. O'Connell has given for dividends returned to NatWest from the Ulster Bank operation in the Republic are staggering. Some €1.5 billion was paid in dividends in 2016. A further €1.5 billion was paid in 2018 and €500 million was paid in 2019. Some €3.5 billion has been sent to NatWest. It has done very well from this country. It is disgraceful that NatWest would even consider axing its operation, which consists of 88 branches, serves 1 million customers and employs 3,000 workers.

There is a powerful case for State intervention and for the nationalisation of Ulster Bank. We have seen nationalisation of banks in the past, when ordinary people had to pay the price.

Why can we not nationalise a banking chain to defend the interests of ordinary people, that is, of 1 million customers, of 3,000 workers and of mortgage holders who must worry every day about the possibility that vulture funds will get their claws into their homes? Under no circumstances should that be allowed to happen. Were the Irish State to nationalise Ulster Bank here, it would be a sure and certain way to prevent those eventualities.

We see a white-collar jobs massacre in banking and a massacre in retail and 2021 will see that threatened in other sectors. I believe the time is coming when the trade union movement in this country, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, will have to initiate a serious discussion in its ranks about something such as a one-day national strike to defend jobs and workers' rights when jobs are threatened and to increase the pressure and mobilise support within society to put pressure on the Government for further, stronger, real action on these issues.

Mr. O'Connell's opening statement drew attention to the fact that a Central Bank policy is in place whereby a bank has to give two months' notice of a closure. That is completely insufficient. How would the FSU like that policy to change? What is its view on state intervention along the lines of nationalisation to defend and protect jobs and services?