Arthur Morgan (Louth, Sinn Fein)

I have four amendments on this section. I will deal with the first fairly substantially and the others very fleetingly. Amendment No. 11 seeks to restrict the risk to Irish taxpayers from credit institutions which are headquartered in this State. There appears to be some level of confusion in relation to this matter and I look forward to some clarification from the Minister. The Government statement issued yesterday at 7 a.m. referred to institutions which are headquartered in this State and that is fine. That was repeated throughout the day by the Taoiseach and last night in the contribution by the Minister, Deputy Gormley. I tabled the amendment because the Irish taxpayer is exposed to enough risk in terms of those institutions headquartered in the State rather than extending that risk to institutions headquartered outside the State. I appreciate the comments by the Minister earlier but I would like some further clarification. If he is now going to consider extending that cover to institutions which are headquartered outside the State, what criteria will apply? It is clear that banks have been able to circumvent some of the scrutiny measures in place by the Central Bank and bring matters to the point we are at now. Given the ability of the banks to evade regulation, how can we be sure that they will not be able to circumvent whatever rules will apply in this new circumstance to transfer some risk from a headquarter branch to a branch in this jurisdiction? This would mean that Irish taxpayers would be underwriting risk that they should not carry.

The Minister might elaborate on his comment regarding the Competition Commissioner, Neelie Kroes, who is talking about coming after us and all sorts of carry on. Has the Minister a position on that? Poor Neelie might be just upset that she was not consulted at the beginning.

We know that schemes along the lines of this one have been introduced by the Dutch, the Belgians and the French and Luxembourg Governments covering institutions in their jurisdictions. Can the Minister confirm that he has taken the advice of the Attorney General and that his officials have examined what happened on those occasions and if they are comparable in any way with what is happening here? This might ensure that there is no difficulty with the EU in that regard.

My amendment No. 15 seeks to add the words "within the confines of the Irish national interest" to subsection (4) following the reference to the terms and conditions which the Minister sees fit. This is intended to concentrate the Minister's attention and to reduce the wriggle room.

Amendment No. 18 seeks to insert the following subsection:

"(5) The Minister shall, on the passage of this Act, introduce a credit institution levy for the purpose of reducing the liability of the Government in respect of its financial guarantee.".

This is self-explanatory.

My final amendment is No. 19 which states:

In page 3, subsection (4), between lines 22 and 23 to insert the following paragraph:

"(a) The State, through a scheme, shall recoup its investment at the earliest possible time, together with a consideration commensurate with the level of risk carried by the Exchequer in each case."

This is to ensure that the taxpayer is guaranteed some reasonable return on the risk taken, not some superficial but a substantial return commensurate with the risk carried by the State.

See this speech in context