Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)

I understand Deputy Penrose's point and fully respect his perspective. The difficulty I have is largely philosophical. When a bank or other company is nationalised and becomes a State-owned company, all citizens become shareholders. Although in law the Minister for Finance is a shareholder, in my view a nationalised company belongs to all of us and we are all shareholders. These are the ordinary people I care about rather than the people who happen to be related to a director of a company. It is their interests I am trying to put first.

Somebody who is a shareholder in the AIB or Bank of Ireland can get this information and has access to that register. In the case of a company like Anglo Irish Bank, which is now nationalised, the people do not have access to that register as only the Minister and Financial Regulator have such access. There is more secrecy in reality around a State owned bank than there would be around a privately owned bank, which I cannot accept.

The intention of the amendment was to relate to favourable loans. There is a diminished threshold, which can be set at €200,000 or €300,000, so that we are not taking into account mortgages of €400,000. The intention of the amendment relates to a disclosure of loans to connect to persons where loans are on favourable terms.

If it is the case that the Minister is prepared to commit to bringing in his own amendment to this end, I would be happy to withdraw mine. If he cannot introduce an amendment to require disclosure of loans on favourable terms, I will have to push the amendment as it stands. We agree on the matter of the diminished threshold in that we are not talking about small loans but significant loans. If the Minister can commit to bringing in his own wording to connect it only to persons on favourable terms, I would be happy to accept it because that is the intent of the amendment. If he does not make that commitment I will push the amendment to a vote.

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