Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael)

I wish to continue where Deputy Connaughton finished, namely, on house repossessions. He is correct that the Health Service Executive is already feeling the pressure in terms of mortgage protection and assisting those with mortgages. It is really only a case of keeping the wolf from the door. I agree with Deputy Connaughton. The banks are off-loading their bad debts to NAMA. When they go through their books and find a house they could possibly sell, they will do so. They will take houses off people.

I wish to say two things to the Government tonight. A scheme must be introduced to protect people who are under pressure - those who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own, people who always paid their debts, mortgages and other loans. I refer to those people who paid over the odds to the banks and the builders because the property market was being fuelled by the Government which allowed the builders and investors to buy into the market. The Government did nothing about that.

The Government is currently paying €500 million for rent allowance. There are enough geniuses in the Department of Finance, or rather there are not, because if there were we would not have found ourselves in the current mess. However, enough people are working in the Civil Service to devise a scheme that would allow for the use of the properties taken over by NAMA so that we would not be still paying €500 million next year for rent allowance. Why should the State pay twice, once to pay NAMA for the builders' properties and again to pay people to stay in properties that might be going well for them? The Government must find a way to make those properties available to the State for council houses and rent allowance purposes. Deputy Connaughton is correct; 80,000 people are currently on the waiting list for council houses. I hope the Government is considering a mechanism whereby local authorities can take over housing estates that are finished or half-finished because the taxpayer has already paid for them through NAMA. I do not want to hear from the Government, the Civil Service or the banks that this cannot be done. Of course it can be done. We own that property now. The property that was put into NAMA in the past two weeks is the best of the worst. The banks picked the best of the worst. Unlike the song, the worst is yet to come.

I spoke to a man the other day whom I know well. I will be careful as I do not wish to identify him. A number of years ago he was in a small job, like myself, when all of a sudden he became a developer. Then he became a super-developer. He told me he had property worth €520 million. He told me that he would be lucky to get €240 million or €250 million for it now. That is his valuation. I would say the banks have a valuation of €100 million on it, if it is even worth that in the current climate. A few years ago he had very little yet he was able to go to the banks and borrow what he liked. They kept throwing out money to him. Was there no accountability at all in the banks? Was nobody taking responsibility? Was everyone full of greed? Everyone was getting paid. Everyone was getting the tip-off. Everyone was getting looked after. However, there was no substance to what they were doing.

I wish to return to what is happening currently with the State's law enforcement agencies. What are they doing and when do we expect to see action on the corrupt bankers? All previous speakers have referred to the anger that exists. I know anger will not get one anywhere, but it will burst somewhere, either outside of this House or some other place. People just have enough. The danger now is that people who are working and who have mortgages will come under increasing pressure because, as the regulator indicated last week, interest rates will increase. I say to the Minister, to the regulator and to the banks that people are just about able to pay their loans at the moment. They are just about able to keep the ship going. People in good jobs must remember that others are on the breadline.

Young people who come to my office are under severe pressure. They have young families and big mortgages and they are trying to keep the ship going. Both husbands and wives work. I can understand why public sector workers are angry about the cuts imposed on them. Those young people have commitments and mortgages. They are under pressure. There is one thing about not getting a pay increase; at least one never bargained for that money and one never had it to spend but it is difficult if one had bargained for it and committed it to a mortgage or to the education of one's children or if it was earmarked for something in the future and it is taken away. The banks and building societies are putting on pressure. Local authorities are to introduce water charges and increase rates for people in business and on young couples trying to make a living. The price of oil has gone up, as has the cost of diesel and petrol. People are under pressure. They are under siege and they are sick and tired of it.

I have some questions for the Minister to which I hope he will respond. When do we expect to see prosecutions for the gangsters that told lies to the Minister, the Government and the people? That is the only way to describe them. When will they be behind bars? I say to the officials, the Minister and the Government, there must be law for everyone in the country, not law for the poor. This morning I was trying to sort out a case for a person on low income who was caught using red diesel. That person broke the law and received a penalty of €2,000. If the fine is not paid the person will be sent to prison. A garda contacted me yesterday about a fine. I say to the Judiciary that it would be better to put people in prison than to impose big fines on them. A lady contacted me yesterday whose husband got caught for having no insurance, not for the first time, who received a fine of €900. The person is on social welfare and cannot live as it is. I say to the judges that they should put people in prison and not have mothers and fathers trying to raise money they do not have. The Judiciary should be more careful about how they fine people given that the gangsters in the banks are still being protected and looked after. They are abroad in their holiday villas, tanning themselves in the sun. We see their pictures in the newspapers yet nothing is happening to them.

The Judiciary should not attack the poor; they should start at the top. Of course there are two laws in this country. A man said to me one time that whether one is a supporter of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Labour Party or Sinn Féin, if one is rich one will be protected. We should always remember that. That is what is happening now. We are not allowed to criticise the banks or the bankers. I reiterate what I said on the first day of the crisis, namely, where was the regulator and the Central Bank? Did anyone in the public service lose his or her job for not doing his or her job? The answer is "No". Will anyone lose his or her job? The answer to that is "No". What will happen to them? We will give them a big, fat pension. We will say, "Here's the pension, good luck and thanks very much for getting this country into the mess you have got it into." That is what happened in this country. We gave people big, fat pensions and we let them out the door. No one lost his or her job. That is why people are angry and sick and tired of what is going on in this country. People are looking for hope and vision.

I say to the Minister and to the Government, Anglo Irish Bank is dead. It should be closed down once and for all because before this is all over we will have put up to €60 billion into that bank and we will still have to do the same job. Anglo Irish Bank should be closed down. People's savings and the good loans that it has must be protected but we should forget about everything else. Allied Irish Banks, AIB, should be also closed down because it was no better. It behaved in the same way. The only bank that showed a bit of respectability - it is not my bank so I do not mind praising it - is the Bank of Ireland. It was complaining for years that it could not compete with the interest rates offered by AIB and Anglo Irish Bank and the manner in which loans were given out. At least Bank of Ireland is not in too bad a shape. It is time we closed down the other two banks. Perhaps we should nationalise the Bank of Ireland and have it as the only bank in the country. We should try to bring in a few banks from abroad to do business in this country because what is happening now is that every single penny we have and every single penny we are borrowing is to keep the banks alive. Ultimately, there is a major risk that this objective will not be realised. If so, it will bring down this country and its economy.

Anglo Irish Bank should be closed down. In this regard, I do not care what is said by anybody, be he a former leader of Fine Gael or anybody else, because that bank cannot be saved. It will not be saved and all we are doing is putting good money after bad. I want to see the bank go down immediately and I mean that. I hope it happens and that the Minister now realises that what Fine Gael was saying from the very beginning about having a good bank and bad bank was right. Anglo Irish Bank is a disgrace.

Businesses are doing their best and there are people who are prepared to take a chance even in these bad times. Three or four billion euro was made available recently for the banks to encourage people to get back into business. Last week, Deputy Michael Noonan made one of the best speeches I have heard in this House for a long time. It concerned the banks, their behaviour and the lies they told the Government and everybody else. I read the speech two or three times and compliment the Deputy thereon because it was excellent. It should be circulated because the Deputy got it right.

If the Government does not do something to make money available to small businesses, the country will fold. The only hope we have of getting out of this recession is to operate from the bottom up, that is, from the level of small businesses. Small businesses always comprised the backbone of this economy and they must be encouraged and supported in every way possible to keep them in business.

I heard from people at Christmas that they could not buy stock because they could not obtain loans from the bank. In the past, they were always able to obtain loans with which to buy stock. The used to sell their stock at Christmas and repay their loans. This year they had great difficulty obtaining loans. The banks are putting unreasonable pressure on the people who always repaid loans. If this country is to get out of the recession, we must start thinking outside the box again. The Government has got it wrong regarding how it is supporting the banks. By the time the Government is out of office, thus giving another Government a chance to tackle the problems differently, the country will be in disarray.

The people will not accept the medicine from the Government. The philosophy of Deputy Harney and the Progressive Democrats was to let the banks and businesses run the country and forget about regulation. High-flying Charlie, former Minister for Finance Mr. Charlie McCreevy, had the same philosophy of letting the builders and investors run their own show without regulation. By God, we have learned that regulation is needed. We need regulation that works and not regulation for the small men.

The night I saw the former Financial Regulator – no disrespect to him – being interviewed on RTE by, I believe, Miriam O'Callaghan, who would have tied him up in knots in two seconds, I said it was no wonder the country was in its present state. The following week we gave the former Financial Regulator a big handshake, thanked him very much for bringing the country to where it is and let him out the door instead on holding him to account. If it had happened in America, he would now be in jail along with the Central Bank-----

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