Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

The purpose of this amendment is to provide for the construction of a levy on banks. I realise amendment No. 2 was ruled out of order. This amendment provides for the cost of regulation to be bourne by the banks and the regulated bodies. In an answer to me recently the Minister for Finance set out the cost of regulation which was bourne by the taxpayer in 2009 for bank regulation as being some €34.5 million. The view of the Labour Party is that the levy should be bourne by the banks. I do not have to tell the Members here what €34 million would do in terms of various services which have found themselves short of money.

One of the oddities of the last financial regulation Bill was that the cost of regulation of the financial sector was borne approximately 50% by the Exchequer and 50% by the various banks and financial institutions. Given that all sources of Government income are under pressure and that the banks have cost ordinary taxpayers an extraordinary amount of money it seems odd that from now on the banks would not meet the full cost of regulation.

As I understand it, in various other areas of regulation the people who are involved in the regulated activity bear the cost of regulation but for some reason when the Bill on financial regulation came before the Dáil a decision was made by the then Minister, Charlie McCreevy, that the cost would be bourne 50% by the Exchequer and 50% by the banks. This amendment would seek to provide that the levy and the cost of regulation from now on would be bourne in full by the regulated entities, that is, the banks and financial services providers.

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