Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

I agree with those who have said that it is very difficult to deal in five minutes with what has been proposed. I hope we shall have an other opportunity to look at the inter-parliamentary arrangements, in discussing topics such as this. Such a time allocation is insufficient for anybody who wants to deal with the matter.

In the time available, I want to make a few points that I believe are important. People are talking about changing personnel at these banks. That is an obvious course of action in dealing with those who have let down the country and behaved in a way that has seriously damaged Ireland, so that it may take generations to recover.

There is much more at stake, however, in terms of a change in culture. There is no evidence that anybody wants to break the circle or the culture that exists. I shall put it simply because I only have a few minutes. When I started in politics, one of the first issues I recall dealing with was the pension funds in CIE, where there were separate wages and salaries pension funds. As the years go on, in terms of the discussion we are now having, the people on wages will be the first to be let go by county managers around the country because they are in the front line. In this regard there is a disgraceful attempt to set up a false enmity between public service and private sector workers. Private sector workers on salaries will, in fact, have lost their jobs, but they are allies, not the enemies, of public service workers who have been scandalously described as being asked to pay for their pensions as if this were for the first time. They will have to pay an additional element on top of the contribution they already make to their pensions.

The next category comprises people who receive compensation rather than wages or salaries. As it is indelicate to say a director of a bank receives a salary, he or she is described as receiving compensation in the form of share transfers, bonuses, etc., which can amount to more than €3 million.

It was assumed in this culture that people in various professions could serve as non-executive directors in the banking system. I challenge anybody to show me a paper describing what is done by non-executive directors. I taught commerce briefly as an academic and I understand the descriptions of the respective roles of executive and non-executive directors. However, people parked themselves on these boards and took the attitude that little people did not understand banking. This attitude was taken to those who earned salaries, not to speak of the scruff who were on wages. It was apparently easy to move €7 billion from one bank to another but if Deputy Fahey, who is very experienced in these matters, tried to move money from his current account in AIB to the Bank of Ireland he would have to physically take the money out of the bank and walk across the street with it, risking a mugging in the process.

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