Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

It just seems to me that this is a real missed opportunity. I understand this is likely to be a policy area for the Government rather than a responsibility of the Central Bank of Ireland, but as a country in the grip of such a vicious housing crisis, it is a mistake to be missing this opportunity to match these funds to the organisations that wish to build housing.

Turning to another element of this context, the banking market here is phenomenally concentrated. Indeed, it is further concentrating almost yearly. Our banking structure is an oligopoly. This gives enormous power to the existing banks in respect to all the aspects of their engagements with customers. I refer to interest rates, where they do business and all the attendant terms and conditions. This is bad for consumers and for citizens. There is a crisis in this regard and it has several aspects. The first concerns why this concentration is happening. The capital reserves held under the macroprudential rules, etc., have an effect on the profitability levels banks can achieve in this State.

The Governor said earlier that some companies are leaving the market but that new ones are entering it. I have no sense, however, that the institutions coming into the market have the capacity that would allow us to say they are truly replacing those entities leaving. There is no evidence to show that the companies entering the market, in slightly different financial forms, have the capacity to take on the business that Ulster Bank and KBC are leaving. We must ensure that we increase competition in this market to make it a healthier one. There are several ways to do that. One involves the credit union sector and the second is a public banking system. At least one political party in government, however, seems to have a fear of public banking, but it has proved to be a successful sector in many other strong economies, including Germany's, for example. Would a public banking system make for a healthy component of a more competitive banking system overall?