Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

The Minister before us is not a Minister of State but the Minister for Defence who is here to defend the indefensible. I hold the Minister in great esteem. However, on the one hand he states the Minister for Finance intends to set in train a process which will lead to 100% cost being applied to the regulated bodies - hopefully they will be regulated - while on the other he refuses to accept the amendment. Let us enshrine the amendment in the Central Bank Reform Bill and let us have absolute clarity of intent on what the Minister indicated in his opening remarks in reply to our first contributions. It is incredible to the public that after everything that has been exposed about the banks' conduct and disposition towards their customer base that we are seeing a continuation of the worst excesses of fees, punitive interest rates and an absolutely intolerable regime now applying where branch banking is no longer what it used to be. We now have the advent - like a pub with no beer - of a bank with no cash transactions. Customers can no longer contact by telephone their local bank and must go through a call centre - one of the 1-800 numbers that land them God knows where. They will endeavour to deal with people in a cold and disjointed way, which is different from the traditional relationship between bank branch staff and their customer base. The whole thing is going to the dogs and the defence for the unreasonable and at times irrational decisions that are taken regarding customers is blamed on the computerisation of the business of transactions, clearing houses and all the rest of it.

After all the public have committed to rescuing these institutions from themselves, it is about time they were taken by the throat and shaken. The people are absolutely infuriated. One of the smallest and most reasonable steps that can be taken is that they bear the full cost of regulation into the future as the amendment requires. Much more needs to be done and a wake-up call would need to be applied to the Minister and the Department over what is happening on the main street and high street regarding the attitude of banks to ordinary customers, people who through tax contributions are bailing out these institutions daily and will be doing so perhaps for the rest of their lives. The Minister should stop the rot now and adopt this amendment and show clear intent regarding the purpose outlined.

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