Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

The problem is about building trust and confidence. There is no trust in the banks, nor is there the degree of confidence there should be. International markets look at the country and the banks in the same way, and there is trust in neither at the moment. Confidence is critical to this. The Taoiseach says he is engaged in the business of seeing that credit flows to small businesses. Will he publish the information he has to date so that we can see the extent of that credit flow? Anybody I speak to, whether those involved in the business of this House or in small businesses, tells me that the lines have tightened so much that it is becoming very restrictive.

One of the problems is that the banks have all the information. There is no real confidence or trust between the National Treasury Management Agency, the Department of Finance and the banks. I have a suggestion for the Taoiseach. What he could do is make an appointment of somebody within the regulatory authority who would direct that the banks strip out their commercial from their residential and other loans and do an analysis on every bank of the numbers of persons who are unable to repay their mortgages and the numbers of small businesses now in distress. This information is available to the banks but they will not publish it. They should give it to the Taoiseach.

The Minister for Finance has said we are now deeply embedded in the banking sector. Confidence is at its lowest ebb. The Taoiseach could have that information in a week and could then put together a package to say to the 80,000, 100,000 or 150,000 mortgage holders who have lost their jobs, are on three-day weeks or face redundancy that we are now in position to know the scale of the picture and to do something in respect of focusing the banks on restructuring those mortgages or putting into effect a number of options to ease the burden upon those people who will not then be faced with foreclosure. In a similar sense with the commercial entities, we would then have a clear picture of the number of small and medium enterprises in serious distress. We could then at least decide what best to do in their interest. I am interested, as I am sure is the Taoiseach, that those people should be able to hold onto their jobs, protect those jobs and that we should be able to build on that through a series of mechanisms.

Will the Taoiseach do this in respect of the banks? We now own a bank whose liabilities we are unaware of, and we are being asked to continue that. I have offered a constructive suggestion that would give the Taoiseach and everybody else a clear picture of what the banks face and what those mortgage holders who cannot make their repayments now face. That would be in everybody's interests and I ask the Taoiseach to respond. A book the Taoiseach should consider for his spare time reading is by Robert Goffee and Gareth Jones and is entitled Why Should Anyone be Led by You?.

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