Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

No bank manager in the country is in a position to authorise the lending of money. Bank managers at Allied Irish Bank or Bank of Ireland cannot and do not have the authority to lend money. A constituent of mine seeking to top up by €5,000 an €18,000 loan already in place was refused that loan despite his business having had a €500,000 turnover less than 18 months ago. The Government has come in here and boasted about the extra money being loaned to the banks. Allied Irish Bank and Bank of Ireland were last year lending €2.5 billion each. The Government says they will lend an extra €1 billion this year, which is fair enough. We will wait and see what happens on a regional basis in terms of what is actually approved.

In respect of loans below €5 million which are not going into NAMA, the banks are now beginning to liquidate many of these using the same criteria as applies when an entity fails and is wound up. The banks, in particular Anglo Irish Bank with its massive black hole, are not being wound up but are getting a bail out from the taxpayer despite the fact that the same principle applies, namely, a commercial entity that does not measure up must close.

The position in respect of distressed mortgages will worsen. Allied Irish Bank recently announced it is to raise its mortgage interest rates. The European Central Bank may raise its rates by the end of this year. The Bank of Ireland will probably follow this practice fairly soon. This will put more pressure on thousands of people around the country yet there is but a fleeting reference to distressed mortgages in the Minister's speech. The Government is putting €40 billion into Anglo Irish Bank, a vote in respect of which will take place in the House tonight. Tomorrow those Deputies who vote in support of this motion will walk up the steps of this House and vote to take special needs assistants from children with special needs. The public are seeing nothing but destruction. In cases where families have been focused since their children were born on attempting to deal with their special needs, they now see the Government being able to raise without difficulty €20 billion for Anglo Irish Bank and a further €20 billion for NAMA, with no plan to have a job stimulus in order to provide opportunities and careers for their sons and daughters in this country, if that is what they want to do.

Tomorrow evening the Government will, by vote, will take away special needs assistants from schools all over the country and children who need them. The Taoiseach knows this. As the former Minister for Finance, the Taoiseach failed to act on the advice which was undoubtedly given to him, namely, that our economy was heading down a one-way street, that we were losing our sense of competitiveness, our focus on exports and our capacity to keep our costs down and that we were heading into the bubble room of development which burst and now has serious consequences for hundreds of thousands of people.

The end result is that, whether we like it, the Government has the numbers pro tem and will force this through. I understand the Financial Regulator has to do its job and Mr. Matthew Elderfield can be very good. He set down his standards and principles. It is about time there was some regulation of the banking system which became reckless and crazy, and which led to the destruction of so many lives in Ireland.

There was and is a better way. I do not accept that, with $80 trillion to lend internationally by bond investors, we should get hung up on a situation whereby the Taoiseach is now allowing subordinated bond holders to be given a guarantee, as happened in the case of Anglo Irish Bank. Last year $80 trillion was available for investment worldwide. Yet, we now have a situation whereby the Government will screw Irish taxpayers, workers and people by imposing a serious levy on every one of the 1.6 million families in the country.

Anglo Irish Bank has proven to be a cancer in the financial world. It has links to the disruption of Quinn Direct and persons on the board of Anglo Irish Bank were also on the board of the Dublin Docklands Development Authority, which had consequences for the Irish Glass Bottle site. The Taoiseach approved the measures for borrowing-----

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