Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am sorry for cutting across Mr. Madouros. I am not questioning the ECB’s decision to increase rates. It is independent and I would not dare question it in that respect. However, I am speaking about the consequences. By increasing the rate to this level, Irish financial institutions have made €3.3 billion in profits because they have so much on deposit, because of the lending facility, because of the deposit facility and because of €84 billion of Irish taxpayers’ money. Mr. Madouros stated that the Central Bank was not interested in banks’ profitability and that it was considering the long term, but the Financial Conduct Authority, FCA, in Britain sat down with banks and devised a pass-through plan for depositors. Banks in Ireland are increasing their deposit rates, but those rates are a fraction of what they are getting from the ECB. These banks were profitable last year when they made €2.2 billion in profit. They are now making €5.1 billion in profit. This is not because of innovation or additional lending, though. The driver of the approximately €3 billion in additional profit that banks will make this year is the ECB increasing the deposit facility rate. Ireland was at the bottom of the Financial Times’sleague of pass-through rates. The Central Bank did not seem to have a plan. The FCA did, one that required firms to show it every six months how they were passing through and so forth. On the back of the consequences of the ECB’s decisions and the multibillion euro profits that the banks are making, are the witnesses satisfied that the banks are doing enough and treating their customers appropriately in terms of this bonanza for the banks?