Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

The Minister is missing the point of the question. The question was whether he would arrange an examination of the financial institutions to see to what extent they have entered into these long-dated security commitments that would justify them imposing these penalties of €20,000 for people to switch. My point is that with the taxpayer now underpinning much of the banking activity, if there is not reasonableness in these charges we should move to get rid of them and give some people relief.

If there is a genuine commercial penalty we can understand why that would be the case. We need to investigate our banks holding long dated securities because my impression is that long dated securities are almost impossible to get. I suspect that they are not holding them and that the justification for the penalty does not stand up.

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