Arthur Morgan (Louth, Sinn Fein)

I would like to support amendment No. 2 tabled by Deputy Burton, but I would have a problem with the possible outworking of it. Most of these payments are performance related or market related. The banks have been doing very well and that was the pretext for organising to pay themselves such very substantial salaries and additions. Clearly the market has dipped but it will come back again on foot of this backing by individual and business taxpayers. Would it not be ironic if that bounce experienced by the bank and the additional market share were to enable the continuance of these very substantial payments? That is a worry. On the other hand, the executives of many of these institutions might not remain for ten minutes after the coming into operation of such a salary scheme. If the best people at the top were to be lost, clearly that would inhibit and damage the institutions which we are trying ensure will work well. The other side of that coin is that some of these executives have presided over some of the carry on which has led to the crisis and I would shed no tears to see some of them go from the financial institutions which have impacted negatively on the economy. The Minister might be in a position to tell us of any inquiries taking place by the regulatory authority, the Central Bank or the Garda fraud squad into some of the very dubious practices which clearly have been occurring in those institutions for a very long time.

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