Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

The banks wield enormous power over the economy and over the lives of millions of ordinary working people. Why should unelected seniour executives, faceless to most people, be able to control the lives of so many people in this way? Is there not an unanswerable case now for the major banks to be taken into public ownership and to have democratically appointed boards to run them? These would represent the real interests of the majority of people who deal with the banks. Is there not a case to break up, for example, the alliance of land speculators, profiteering developers and greedy banks that enchain young working people for the rest of their lives because they need to buy a home?

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