Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Like other speakers, I congratulate the Commissioner on acquiring a portfolio that is very important and one that will grow in importance as time goes by. I want to raise a couple of issues that are of particular interest, some of which have been already referred to by other speakers to some extent.

The first is the issue raised by Deputy O'Callaghan in regard to high mortgage interest rates. As the Commissioner will know, in the past anybody who borrowed in this country and throughout the European Union and did not keep up to date with their payments had penal interest rates imposed on them. This meant they had no chance whatsoever of recovering or competing in the market in which they were operating. They were condemned before they started and then they were blamed for what happened.

I have previously discussed the following issue with the Commissioner. We are still recovering from the ripples of the financial crash in this country and we are still being punished for it, which I understand. However, there is one thing that needs to be borne in mind. Deputy Doherty mentioned the activities of vulture funds. It is very seldom I agree with him, but I would agree with him on the points he made in that regard. I have dealt with many of the vulture funds across the table in individual cases and I have been shocked. Not all of them are the same. I have been shocked at the way they treat people. In many cases, when partners in a household were crying their eyes out in front of such people they got no response other than a glazed look at the middle distance, which clearly showed that they had no intention of even conceding.

The primary lending institutions and the secondary lending institutions are applying current standards to a situation that they previously applied different standards to eight or ten years ago. They are taking the view that the right way to do this is A, B and C. They did not say that when they were lending to the people concerned. In fact, they said the reverse. A number of bankers from outside of this jurisdiction visited here to our cost because the undermined the stability of the market, all in pursuit of market share, as the Commissioner will know. The result of that has been the withdrawal of many banks and the insurance companies as well. They withdrew to their homelands and walked away with no responsibility good, bad or indifferent. I blame the Central Bank of Ireland for allowing these things to happen, as I have done before and will do again. I blame the European Central Bank, ECB, on which there was Irish representation from the Central Bank of Ireland for allowing these things to happen in this country and across Europe.

I know that the Commissioner's heart is in the right place and that there are other hearts in different locations across Europe. My final point is in regard to the Apple case. I profoundly disagree with Deputy Doherty's remarks in that regard. I do not accept the case he put forward. I had occasion to dispute this issue with a former Commissioner for Competition in this House a couple of years ago. I believe there was an intention to discourage foreign direct investment in this country. The way in which we were portrayed internationally has been very unhelpful, in pursuit of the single objective of winning the argument. The depiction of the poor unfortunate donkey having a carrot dangled on a fishing rod in front of it comes to mind. I was embarrassed to see the way that particular argument was emerging. That is how it was. Suffice it to say, we are responsible for taxation and manufacturing in our own country. That should continue. We should not under any circumstances allow a situation to develop whereby we are seen as a second, third, fourth or fifth option location for foreign direct investment in order to appease those who feel the investment should go to them.