Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

When I was in government, I was always very wary of transposing power away from Ministers. I have always believed the Minister will get the blame, even if independent regulation has been provided for. There seems to be some amnesia within the Labour Party about its love affair with independent regulation. The Deputies opposite have forgotten that the demand for an independent banking regulator, separate from the Central Bank, arose from the Opposition benches. When it turned out that the system was not great, they emphasised the fact that it had been introduced by the Government. At the time, however, there had been great demand among Opposition Deputies for its introduction. They wanted everything to be independent. As Minister, I consistently made a different argument. In the Departments for which I was responsible, I was careful to act in a way that did not allow things to move too far away. I did that for the obvious reason that I was concerned about the problems we subsequently experienced. I was worried that regulators who were not answerable to Ministers could make their own decisions. I was aware, as the Minister, Deputy Rabbitte, has said, that Ministers would be held responsible for the actions of regulators at the end of the day even though they had not part in them.

I am openly sceptical about European regulations. The fetish that the regulated market would sort everything led to the banking crisis. The EU imposed strict controls on how much governments could borrow and what they could do, but it did not impose any controls on the private banking sector across Europe. Even if we had regulated the banks here, that would not have stopped the foreign banks from coming here, as they did, and engaging in crazy lending. I believe we should maintain maximum control here. The Minister has agreed with the principle here. All we are arguing about this evening, in large measure, is where the line between ministerial oversight and regulatory discretion should be drawn. We are arguing that the Minister has not gone far enough in ensuring ministerial oversight. We believe anything that is in the national interest should be the subject of ministerial oversight rather than being at the discretion of ComReg.

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