Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

The banks could use this money to generate new activity in the SME sector. I do not believe we have a choice in this matter. We must look to the ICC and ACC models which for many years provided a good flow of capital to the agricultural and corporate sector in this country. The Labour Party previously considered the establishment of a third banking sector. The proposal before us is the equivalent of this. The Government must assert once and for all that it will be responsible for controlling the supply of money in this country. The only way to do this is to have an independent bank that is capitalised - the strategic investment bank would be capitalised from the pension reserve - the primary function of which will be to ensure the engine of the economy is supplied with a steady flow of funding. This has not been done by the private banking sector which acted recklessly. For the future, we must ensure that this does not happen again.

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