Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

I studied economics in UCD and I am a postgraduate of the Michael Smurfit School of Business. It was understood in our analysis at the time of enterprise development in countries, that countries aim to develop a much larger and scaled-up indigenous sector. The SME sector in this country is not scaled up to size comparatively with other European economies and it is a great weakness. It is a weakness that has never been tended to by the Government, unfortunately.

I wish to briefly touch on the banking market in this country. Again, there is a serious lack of economic analysis from a Government perspective on this matter. I have raised this issue with the Minister a number of times. Mario Draghi, when he was the President of the European Central Bank, stated the Irish banking system is a "quasi-monopoly". The Minister's predecessor, Michael Noonan, created a two-pillar banking system. He created an oligopoly or a very concentrated power in the hands of just two banks. There are smaller banks but the two banks have 85% of the market between them.

Under the position of the current Minister for Finance, we have seen two banks state that they are going to exit the banking system. I have heard nothing from the Minister or the Government to stem the flow of exits from the Irish banking sector. I have heard analysis on issues such as capital requirements, interest rates and the increased risk in the Irish market but no solutions as to how that flow of exits will be stemmed. One of the partners in government, the Green Party, has indicated previously that it would support a public banking system yet Fine Gael, and probably the only political party in the Dáil to do so, remains completely against the idea of simply replicating what is successful in other European countries such as Germany. We are in a crisis situation with a lack of competition in the banking market in Ireland and it seems to me that the Minister for Finance stands idly by.