Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Unless the Minister can persuade me otherwise, this section should be opposed. I apologise if I am repeating points made earlier. This is effectively a €63 million tax cut for the banking sector. The Minister is planning to exempt KBC and Ulster Bank, which are exiting the market, from the bank levy. The business that KBC and Ulster Bank do will remain and will be taken over by other entities. The projected revenue for the bank levy goes from €150 million to €87 million. We will get €63 million less, even though the amount of banking business that will be conducted in the State will remain exactly the same. The beneficiaries of this will be the remaining pillar banks which will have less tax imposed on them, in terms of the bank levy, than they should for the amount of business they have. Maybe it is Ulster Bank and KBC which are the beneficiaries. The Minister can enlighten us on that. As I understand it, and I am open to hearing what the Minister has to say, this amounts to a €63 million cut in the levy that would otherwise accrue from the banks. It also points to something else, namely, the problem with the banking sector in this country. Given the huge suffering and hardship endured by people in this country in order to bail these people out because of their systemic importance to maintain this banking system.

That is the way I want to put it. People will say that some of those banks were not beneficiaries, Ulster Bank, for example, although it was bailed out elsewhere.

I question the system. We suffered greatly and are still suffering the consequences of the approach that was taken to the banking and financial crash. The banking sector is still in disarray. Let us not forget that it also charges the highest interest rates of any banking sector anywhere in Europe. It has not exactly done us many favours since we bailed it out. Should the lesson that we take from the financial and banking crash, and indeed from the departure of many players in the Irish banking system, not be that we need to fundamentally revise our attitude to how banking operates and look for a different model of banking?

Deputy Barry or Deputy Doherty may well have said this before me but it will not surprise anyone to hear me say that we need to think about a not-for-profit banking model, essentially a bigger version of what credit union banking is about. Credit unions pursue social and societal objectives rather than the bottom line, which is what banks do. That approach leads banks to do certain things or just depart when it does not suit them to do certain things, leaving customers in the lurch, flogging off their mortgages and creating great uncertainty, fear and anxiety. That is a bigger point arising from this.

I ask the Minister to explain how this is justified. It seems to be more pandering to the banks when we need to look at radically reforming the banking sector.