Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

Yes, but the money the Minister is putting in is related to those debts. Can we be honest about it and say there is not a bob for businesses and home owners in the money going into either Anglo Irish Bank or Irish Nationwide? The focus is all on our two main banks, Allied Irish Banks and Bank of Ireland. The Minister is taking about quantitative easing of €54 billion, of which only approximately half is going into the ordinary countrywide mainstream systemic banks into which people put their deposits and that lend to businesses and homeowners. That is the crux of the problem on the NAMA proposal. The NAMA proposal will fail or work to the degree that those two issues are addressed. For homeowners, the psychological signal is that one has a framework agreement for a two-year period. Many will say that two years is not enough and that we should make it three. All I say is that it is a psychological framework. If we can get the balance in our economy right in two years, we can start a recovery. If we are starting recovery in two years, that problem will not exist in exactly the same way.

The second Labour Party amendment, No. 80, is to provide that there will be a framework for increasing lending to SMEs and to first-time buyers. Big multinational companies do not rely on either Allied Irish Banks or Bank of Ireland primarily or exclusively for their borrowing. They are fine. They are getting their credit requirements either internationally in their home country or partially in Ireland so they do not have the kind of problem that small and medium indigenous industry has. Again, this is about psychology and sending out a signal to the person who, for example, has a workshop or other enterprise employing ten or 15 people. In the past year they might have let go seven or eight people and they are back to where they were six or seven years ago. As they face Christmas they are going to have to make a decision on whether they can realistically stay in business. In many cases, unless people can find a way to structure their relationship with their bank to ensure a flow of credit then many of them, if they are over 50 and have some capacity to retire, will just let it go. One needs to give a psychological indication to such people that we have something to offer them.

Perhaps we could put some civil servants into the banks in Galway, Cork, Waterford and two or three big bank branches in the Dublin region so that they can follow what happens with the credit committee and provide monthly reports about credit flow or whether it is a phony credit flow. That is when existing mortgages are just turned over or existing arrangements about term loans and overdrafts are turned over. It is not new lending, it is the renewal of existing lending.

On the other hand, could the Minister not get some people into the Department, the Financial Regulator's office and the Central Bank who themselves have practical experience of banking and who know how and when to help to get credit going again? All of this is taking place against a background where both Bank of Ireland and Allied Irish Banks have indicated that given the great difficulty of their financial positions, they are going to have to deleverage or shrink their balance sheet.

The Minister was educated by the Jesuits. The Jesuits used to run a college of industrial relations for workers, particularly in the greater Dublin region. Their theory of distribution was about baking a bigger cake, and if we could only bake a bigger cake we could all get a bigger slice of the pie.

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