Shane Ross (Dublin South, Independent)

I share the suspicions and mistrust about any Bill that has come to this House at the whim of the IMF and EU. Why is it necessary to introduce a Bill of this sort at this time? The timing is to show us doing our obedient best for our masters, the ECB, the EU and the IMF. This might have been an opportunity, because it is not an urgent Bill, for us to say "no", that we would not introduce the Bill yet, we would introduce it when we get something back, and we all know the minimum we are looking for from the EU-IMF, a change in the interest rate, which has not been forthcoming.

This Bill, described by one speaker as closing the stable door after the horse has bolted, is clearly a Bill that is only applicable in the case of Armageddon. These are emergency measures for when Armageddon hits the nation. Unfortunately Armageddon has come and gone and this Bill is to sort out a problem that has mushroomed out of control.

It is obviously a Bill aimed at a similar crisis in the future and it is a perfectly natural reaction to the impotence the Minister for Finance and Taoiseach felt that day in September 2008, when the banks came knocking at their door. The IMF and the Department of Finance, which is in its pocket and in the pocket of the EU, decided if these resolutions had been in place on that date, something would have been different and it would have been possible to deal with the crisis in a different way that would have allowed for it to be remedied. I do not see any evidence that the Minister and Taoiseach would have made any other decision in this Bill.

I say that because things have not changed in terms of the balance of power between the banks, the Government, the Department of Finance and the central banks, and the interlinking, incestuous relationships between them. On that night, the decision by the Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance was to give a blanket bank guarantee because a gun was put to their heads by the bankers. They were impotent and had no other weapons at their disposal, as might have been the case under this Bill, but mostly they did it because they were the junior partners in that relationship and lacked the knowledge, expertise and bottle to do anything else. It is my guess that power, which rested with the banks and the Department of Finance on that night when the politicians found themselves helpless and paralysed by their lack of expertise, is still in the same place.

There is plenty of evidence that points to that. We can look at what has happened within the banks, which are the main culprits, if not the only culprits, in the crisis that the Bill is addressing. There have been efforts by this and the previous Minister for Finance to tackle what appeared to be the symptoms of the problems in the banks.

This Minister recently asked the banks for a board review. The response of the banks has been pitiful. Bank of Ireland responded in a brazen way to his request at the AGM two weeks ago. Instead of removing directors who had been there pre-2008, as was the intention, five out of six of the non-executive directors who had been there pre-2008 were re-elected at the AGM. That was really giving the Minister two fingers for his ambitions in that particular sphere. That was the opportunity for the Minister to insist that the Bank of Ireland would get rid of the guys who were there at that time, who were part of the rotten old regime and to put in new people. Bank of Ireland did allow two directors to retire who had been there at the same time. The extraordinary gap in not putting in new people was quite difficult to understand. The governor stayed in place and five of the six directors for re-election were there at the time of that particular crisis as it broke. In other words, they were in place when the property frenzy was indulged by those banks.

Why is that? I cannot understand it. My only explanation is that the big banks in this country still feel powerful enough to say to the Government, "We do it our way, not your way". Otherwise, they would have bent the knee, got rid of those directors and replaced them with others. That is what is happening and the indication is that it will continue to happen. The culture in those banks has not changed. The way to address the problem may be in the language of transfer orders, SMOs and bridging banks. That may be part of it, although that is down the road, but the immediate problem is not being addressed and is being ducked and funked by politicians who tend to listen too much to the Department of Finance, which is so much part of the establishment and which has been in the pockets of the banks and the Central Bank for so long that it cannot extricate itself from them.

We have the boards in that situation. They were part of the incestuous relationship which has been touched on in recent days by the rather high profile controversy surrounding a member of the board who is a member of the board of the DAA as well. We have boards that are patently policed and peopled by insiders. What is so disappointing - this is not a criticism of this Minister, it is a criticism of the previous Minister, but I hope this Minister will do something about it - is that the public interest directors who were appointed by the previous Government supposedly to watch those directors who have been presiding over the disaster are also people who are patently not experienced in banking or allied areas but are representatives of insiders from the Department of Finance and other Departments and some of whom are ex-politicians from this House. There is absolutely no reason people who are part of the governing party or ex-Ministers should be put on the boards of banks except that the Government feels comfortable with them, but I do not believe they have done anything in the interests of the taxpayer.

Talking of insiders, why are the banks allowed to continuously reappoint the same auditors - companies which have permitted padded valuations to go into the accounts of Bank of Ireland, AIB, Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide for years and years? Why has the Government not stepped in and said "No, we have got to have new auditors because these people have failed." The auditors have their noses in the trough. For instance, PwC has got more than €100 million in fees from the Bank of Ireland in the past ten years. No wonder it is reappointed and signs the books all the time. The relationship is too cosy.

The response of the Government is questionable. I do not question its bona fides, I question its weakness. The idea that we are going to sort out the banking problem, not just through the Bill, which I have not got to yet, for which I apologise, but by introducing a system of what is known as pillar banks is very dangerous. One man's pillar bank is another man's cartel. The idea of putting two major banks, a duopoly bank, and encouraging a lack of competition in the banks suggests to me that we are building huge trouble for ourselves down the road. It was in the period of the previous duopoly when retail banking was dominated by AIB and Bank of Ireland that we had the most extraordinary controversies in the areas of overcharging and consumer suffering.

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