Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)

I raised the issue of significant profits - €5 billion in profits - being made with a derisory tax contribution. The Minister in his argument said that if we were to take in more taxation, that could go on the customers, the people who have mortgages and so on. I pointed out that, actually, people who have mortgages are being ripped off. Comparing our country to others, people here are absolutely being ripped off in terms of the mortgage spreads in Ireland. They are very high by international standards. That needs to be addressed. I said that needs to be addressed; the Minister said the way to address it is competition. Competition would help, but in subsequent remarks he confirmed that we are going in the wrong direction on competition because lenders have left, so that is not working. We have a situation of large profits and very little tax contribution and people are really being ripped off with those mortgage spreads. It is unjustifiable as to why those rates are so high in Ireland. That is an easy profit to take off people. That needs to be tackled. One way to do so would be to say to the banking sector, "Make a fair contribution in taxation because you are ripping people off on their mortgages." Maybe if they were not doing that, we might look on them more benignly, but they are not treating mortgage customers in a fair way. Our spreads are about three times above the UK's.