Arthur Morgan (Louth, Sinn Fein)

My amendment is slightly different in that it proposes to insert the following:

The income of any senior manager or any employee of a financial institution that is availing of funds under the National Pension Reserve Fund shall not be greater than that of an Irish Government Minister.

I am sure many people know that our Ministers and Deputies are far too highly paid. In light of the significant bank of opinion that shares that view, offering to reduce the salaries of these banking executives to a level equivalent to that of a Minister is reasonable and probably far more generous than what the majority of people would like to see it. I believe they would wish to reduce it substantially more. In recent weeks we heard that one of these characters was earning more than €3 million plus bonuses per annum.

I understand that at a time when the Celtic tiger was running mad with developers, speculators and all sorts of characters coining it and making large fortunes, obviously these bankers lost the run of themselves, which is fair enough. The problem I have is that they did not even earn the money. We have only to look at the mess they have helped create around us. Clearly the banking sector has been a major contributor to the reputation that we now have internationally, where the level of trust in financial institutions is on the floor. It will be extremely difficult to improve that level of trust and begin to get the economy moving again.

I acknowledge that the banks play a pivotal role in the running of any economy. However, we need to ensure the executives have their feet on the ground. They are highly paid and contributed substantially to wrecking the economy. The least we should expect of them now is that they would take a level of salary that is supported by this House. That would send a strong message to society generally and particularly to low and middle-income earners who are hurting badly. Many public sector workers when they look at their wage slips tomorrow will see that the pensions levy will have kicked in in some cases and its impact will begin to hit home. Painful as that is, at least if people in this category saw others, particularly bank executives, sharing the burden it would be some comfort to them. This is our opportunity to send that very clear message to the bank executives and the public generally.

I have tabled another amendment on this matter. The bonuses those executives received in each of the past three years should be handed back. In many cases people were acting, to say the least, very dubiously while they were receiving those bonuses. Therefore it is my very strong view that they earned those bonuses through means other than fair play. It is critical that those bonuses be handed back.

I agree entirely with Deputy O'Donnell. The Minister has the report on the executives' remuneration. Will he share it with us? Can he at least give us the conclusions of the report to allow us evaluate them?

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