Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I move amendment No. a1b:

In page 3, before section 2, to insert the following new section:

"2.—The National Treasury Management Agency shall make an annual report to each House of the Oireachtas regarding funding provided under this Act.".

This amendment is self-explanatory. Its purpose is to put information into the public domain and on to the floor of this House in respect of what is being done with the taxpayers' money that is being taken from the National Pensions Reserve Fund and put into the two banks. As a long-standing member of the Oireachtas Committee on Finance and the Public Service, I am aware that the National Pensions Reserve Fund produces an annual report. However, like many other such reports, it is issued a long time after the relevant year end and is, of its nature, quite generalised.

In the case of the National Pensions Reserve Fund, its annual report includes detailed reports on all the equity investments the fund makes in thousands of companies throughout the world, including tobacco and armament companies. The Minister has indicated there may be changes in this regard in view of ethics concerns. With a Green Party conference pending, we may be in a position to look forward to a stronger ethical base to National Pensions Reserve Fund investments. All the recent lists feature well known names such as Haliburton and companies with tobacco investments. I met the chairman of the National Pensions Reserve Fund at a meeting of the Oireachtas Committee on Finance and the Public Service some time ago to discuss these matters. He undertook to follow, on a voluntary basis, the United Nations guidance code on ethical investment. I understand the Green Party, as part of its negotiations for Government, received some indication that this ethical basis might be transferred into law. That would apply to all these thousands of investments in managed funds of different types, run by the various brokers who, in effect, are investors on behalf of the National Pensions Reserve Fund.

What I am talking about in this amendment is rather different. It proposes the publication of an annual report in respect of the funding provided under this Act, which relates to the covered institutions and the €7 billion in recapitalisation funding to Allied Irish Banks and Bank of Ireland. In addition, later sections of the Bill deal with the extension of regulation to derivative products, in particular to contracts for difference. The annual report of the National Pensions Reserve Fund will not contain any report on contracts for difference. Contracts for difference are now down the Swanee but the matters the report could refer to would include how these banks manage their affairs from a prudential and regulatory point of view.

This is our money. It would have been sitting in a pension fund for social welfare and public service pensions after 2025. This money was not to be touched until 2025 and we need to know what is happening to it.

It is not beyond the wit of some clever person on the Stock Exchange, as part of a hedge fund or in a private equity company, to buy up Bank of Ireland and AIB shares very cheaply. In three years time this investor would have a controlling stake in ordinary shares, subject to the provisions of the Credit Institutions (Financial Support) Act and the powers of the Minister under that Act. The heist of the century will be possible. In The Irish Times recently someone wrote that those in balaclavas stole only €7 million from Bank of Ireland last Friday while those in white shirts and ties have taken billions. We get understandably worried by those with shotguns and balaclavas robbing banks in the traditional way but we must be more worried about white collar criminals stealing whole banks from under the noses of the taxpayers. It is not beyond my capacity to imagine a private equity fund or a hedge fund buying the bulk of the shares at cheap prices, given that they are all but valueless at the moment, and one would be in a very powerful position vis-À-vis our Government. In two or three years time, when we hope the banks will have cleaned out the worst of the bad debts and got back to base in respect of capital, the banks become an attractive position to hold onto in private equity or in a hedge fund style for a further three or four years before selling, as was done with Eircom.

We want reports in this House on a regular basis to set out what is happening to the money we have given the banks. I saw a report by Transparency International, which sought better accountability and to combat corruption around the world. What this group had to say about Ireland was very interesting. It referred to a lack of accountability as a key weakness in our system. It has been a hallmark of this Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrat Government for the past 11 years that it gives as little information as possible. Hence, freedom of information access was dramatically reduced by the Government.

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