Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

I am a former member of the finance and public service committee and I remember proposing during my five years of service on the committee that it should pay particular attention to the charging practices of the various banking institutions. We prepared and published a report on this and Deputies Bruton, Burton, others and I were very much involved in the exercise. I can consider the position all these years later as a former employee of one of these banking institutions of 12 years duration. As a customer today, knowledgeable of the experiences of my community and the wider business environment in particular, I can see the position is worse than it was when we set about the preparation of that report.

Despite all the bailout efforts for banking institutions, practices are mushrooming within the banking sector in particular that are geared towards ripping off the Seán and Mary citizen customer. It is an outrage that they are continuing to get away with it and there is no serious check on these practices that every day further burden already hard-pressed ordinary and decent citizens across the State.

It is long past time that a serious engagement should take place and the banking institutions brought to heel. Such an effort is not contained in this Bill in the way that it should be, although I will not object to its final passage. There is significant need for a wake-up call on the Government's part as to what is actually happening on the high street with regard to the conduct of the banking institutions vis-À-vis their respective customers. People have been left in an invidious position as we move more to a cashless society, and people are absolutely trapped in the diktat of these profit-driven entities and those who lie faceless behind them.

There is a serious confidence deficit now in the ordinary consumer vis-À-vis the banking institutions. This proposal, in a small but welcome way, would help to assuage some of those fears as there would at least be an annual review of the extent of the consumer protection model at the heart of the regulatory system now being developed. Without consumer protection at the core and a central pillar of the approach to new regulation within financial institutions, the current serious lack of confidence on the part of ordinary people will deepen in the time ahead. I commend the amendment from Deputies O'Donnell and Burton and I hope the Minister might have a more positive response than those given heretofore.

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