Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

We are now facing a cake that is not growing, we are facing a national cake that is shrinking. How does one ensure, therefore, that first-time buyers and small and medium enterprises continue to get their share of the national cake if we do not put protective mechanisms into the Bill? The fact is that their slice will disappear to a significant extent because they are the easiest point. They lack clout. Someone who is employing 15 people in a workshop might not be experienced in the business of banking. Why should her or she be? Perhaps he or she is making furniture or supplying services. Such people are not able to afford an expensive accountancy advice service any more, so they are back to presenting themselves at the bank manager's door and saying "Please Sir, can I have some credit?" That is an "Oliver" moment for many small and medium enterprises. "Please Sir, can I have some credit?"

The Minister must be able to say to the people in the bank branches that he accepts they have to examine the creditworthiness of clients, which is a high barrier at the moment, but he and his civil servants in the Department of Finance must engage in that exercise with the banks because half of the €54 billion of quantitative easing, the money going to Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide is dead money and will not do anything in the real economy, it is simply to fill a hole. That is black hole stuff; it will not do much for us. That is the reality. However, the money going into Bank of Ireland and Allied Irish Banks is different because they are high street operators in every town and county in Ireland.

Related to that is another issue which the people in NAMA will have to consider. The fee package of €240 million a year is largely going to go, inevitably, into the Dublin region. If the Minister is talking about spending that kind of money, it must be spread around the country because, again, if that is stimulating activity it is wrong that it is all sucked into the Dublin area. There are ways and means of doing that without interfering with contracts. It can be a factor that is looked at and examined. There are, for example, very good legal, accountancy and liquidation services operating outside the Dublin region. NAMA and financial services in Ireland are concentrated in the Dublin region and the framework of this proposal and of the banks lacks a regional element. This is really important. The Minister could try to pass it out to the bigger cities. 1 o'clock

The other quantitative easing in the NAMA legislation is the €5 billion, and possibly €10 billion if necessary, the NAMA board will have to spend on completing projects and so forth. Again, a fair amount of economic planning is required. The Minister has already agreed to the clause about contributing to the economic and social development of the country, and I thank him for that. The real challenge for people is not just to act as macro economists telling us that we must cut, cut, cut but also to tell us how this €54 billion can be contributed. If the Minister puts no obligations on the banks on these two issues, and that is absent from the Bill, the banks will shock him with their ingratitude.

I accept this is a challenge, but the country is in a position it has never been in previously. It is in a deflationary spiral. Like an aeroplane in the Second World War films we watched years ago, we are going down in a widening gyre until we crash. Unless we produce some serious thinking to address this, we will not get out of it. I urge the Minister to accept the Labour Party amendments or I will accept the Minister proposing his version of those amendments if he has advice from the Attorney General to that effect. They are not prescriptive, they are just a requirement.

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