Ned O'Keeffe (Cork East, Fianna Fail)

We must ask why we are here this evening. We are here simply because of greed throughout the western world and events in the world financial services. I compliment the Minister on drafting legislation and taking a fire brigade approach to the matter so quickly to address the crisis.

I have been a member of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service for approximately seven years and many of the questions we asked of the Financial Regulator and the Central Bank were left unanswered. There was a failure on the part of the committee also because all it was interested in doing was discussing bank charges and getting more competition into the system. Competition creates its own difficulties. The Minister is supporting six Irish financial institutions that have been to the forefront of Irish financial services for generations. The introduction of financial institutions from abroad caused the crisis in our financial services because the competition was unreal. Competition is fine if it is properly regulated but a small number of banks were not able to meet the competition.

I am quite critical of the operations of the Central Bank because for as long as I can remember every quarter it has warned Governments of all persuasions of the dangers of over-borrowing and an over-heated economy but we heard nothing from it in the past three or four years. One bank in Ireland was offering more interest on small and large deposits than it was getting on its loan book in repayments. That could not work and it is the role of the Central Bank to regulate as it should and put on the warning lights.

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