Seán Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)

Exactly. We are going to invest in banks blindfolded. We do not know anything about that bank. What a way to run a shop. This is typical of the way the State traditionally has operated.

We have got ourselves into a mess. We sat back and allowed the PMPA to engage in indiscriminate underwriting. Ultimately, the taxpayer had to bail it out. A former Minister for Finance, Mr. Alan Dukes, who is now one of the directors of Anglo Irish Bank, had to bail out AIB because of its reckless trading with ICI. There is no change proposed to regulations dealing with how banks should perform their duties.

The Minister should remember that plumbing is for plumbers. If everybody stuck to their own trade we would not be in the mess we are in. What is wrong is that building societies want to become banks, banks want to become insurance companies, and insurance companies want to become banks. Everybody wants to be something else and yet there is no question of introducing new regulations to confine people to the business they are supposed to perform. Banks are there to give a service to the public, to fund development for the future of this country and to give jobs to people. No change whatsoever is proposed to the regulations but we are asked to blindly purchase this bank without knowing how we are to dispose of it in the future, what liabilities we will inherit, how we are to fund them, how it will affect the reputation of this country.

This will instil fear in people investing in the two retail banks which are vitally important. We are nationalising one bank and now we are investing in AIB and Bank of Ireland. In a months' time the Minister may be back here asking us to approve a further purchase of shares in AIB or Bank of Ireland. What private investor would invest in banks when they do not know the future direction of those banks?

I am sick of listening to Ministers telling us we should act responsibly as an Opposition and think of the future of the country. Nobody gives us an opportunity to debate issues such as this. The Minister has the cheek to come in here and ram this legislation through in four and a half hours and expect us to act in a patriotic way and look after the interests of the country when we cannot even debate a topic of such seriousness, the takeover of a bank by Irish taxpayers without knowing what its liabilities are. This is a total disgrace and I will not vote in favour of this legislation.

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