Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent)

I concur with many of the sentiments expressed by previous speakers. I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak to the Bill and note its interesting Title. As a businessman, the Minister of State understands business. Deputy Peter Mathews worked in banking for years. Earlier in the week in Private Members' time we discussed legislation introduced by Deputy Michael McGrath which sought to introduce important measures to remove from society vultures who were demonising people and driving them to despair and, in some cases, suicide. I hope this Bill, with its simple Title, will do what it says on the tin. I know it has been drawn up in the correct spirit.

As a Deputy who supported the previous Government, I voted for the banking guarantee in the belief there was no other way. I have regretted that decision ever since because the banks fooled us and tricked the then Minister for Finance, the late Brian Lenihan, and his officials. They have also tricked his successor, Deputy Michael Noonan, and his officials.

Last week the Secretary General of the Department stated he did not have enough staff. He certainly does not have enough staff who understand what makes businesses tick. While I am not being critical of the officials present or other departmental staff, the Department needs new thinking. For this reason, all new staff should come from the private sector and have stood behind counters or machines, built their premises, paid tax, insurance and VAT and dealt with all the regulations some of the officials in the Department love to dish out. We need a sea change in how small indigenous businesses are dealt with because they must be nurtured. They are smothered with regulation after regulation and will not be able to survive. I am not arguing against the Bill, but as I stated last week, for every new regulation that comes from Brussels we add at least nine or ten more besides.

The industry that gets most support from all of this is the printing industry, and much of this business goes abroad because of ineptitude in our procurement procedures. We cannot be imaginative as other countries are and divide large contracts into several parcels so they do not have to be tendered throughout the EU. Paperwork is arriving every morning in the letterboxes of small businesses. The postmen are weighed down with it.

I listened with interest to Deputy Peter Mathews. We should all listen to him. He has experience of banking, and not with the banks I call the magnificent seven who threw credit at everyone and almost forced us to take money. Deputy Mathews worked for the Industrial Credit Corporation, ICC, which was a brilliant bank when I was a young fellow. The Agricultural Credit Corporation, which the farming community set up, was also a good bank. Those banks were restricted in who they could lend to and chose to be that way. They served the country well. They gave to businesses and had a rapport with their borrowers. A small amount of credit can stimulate a lot and will bring returns to the Exchequer in PRSI and VAT as well as creating customers for insurance, fuel, printing and other services. This all turns over the economy and gets it going. That is how it got going. We can never forget that.

We welcome multinational companies and foreign direct investment and want more of them but the cost of bringing them into the country is considerable. They are welcome and we must nurture them and attract more of them. However, we must go back to recognising and believing in indigenous businesses, whether consisting of one self-employed person, a family, or five, ten, 20 or 100 employees. What has happened in recent times is not helping these businesses. We have a difficulty at present in my county where a new company is taking over from Bord Gáis and wants to tear up the contracts its customers had with Bord Gáis. The existing contracts are not being respected and standards are not being applied. I have a similar concern about the company that will be given the water franchise. I will elaborate on that issue at another time, with the permission of the Ceann Comhairle. Today, we are talking about banking.

The two pillar banks did not provide the €3 billion in lending. They were expected to present a business plan to the previous Government, of which I was a supporter, but extensions and further extensions were granted. The plans, when they were eventually presented, were rejected by the Minister and they went back to the drawing board. The banks led us on a merry dance and never loaned the money. They told blatant untruths and said they were lending the money but did not do so.

At present, I am in the process of changing from being a sole trader to forming a limited company. I had an overdraft as a sole trader but my bank told me I could not transfer the overdraft to the limited company. My good name should be sufficient to bring the overdraft across. I have been in business for 30 years. A bank will seek any way it can to turn off the tap. As Deputy Mathews said, they are interested only in increasing their own balance sheets and not in the good of the country or in helping business people. Senior bank management, not the ordinary bank staff, are determined to make themselves look good and prove they can do enough to be promoted to the top jobs where they can be great boys and be paid more than €500,000. It is all fundamentally flawed and wrong. It cannot work, it will not work, it did not work and it will never work. We must change tack completely.

I welcome the Credit Guarantee Bill, but I hope the €150 million it provides will not be sucked in by the banks and used to avoid lending the money they are supposed to lend. Banks are overstretched. One does not need to be a genius to know that. Half the money we owe to banks, including the former Anglo Irish Bank, should be written off. This is the message the Taoiseach must bring to Angela Merkel next week. The European project could be unfolding on its feet. This is worrying. The Taoiseach must bring the message to her good self that it was mainly her own banks, and the French, who pushed money in here when our own banks were broke. They continued to fire money into Ireland and now the Irish taxpayer is having to pay back this money. This must stop. We must cut off at least half that money. Last night, I discussed this matter and the promissory notes with Deputy Mathews. We must print more money and park this debt. It is not within the energy or ability of the Irish people, now and for generations to come, to repay that kind of money. It is just not possible. We have to do what the Americans and British did. I do not know how many trillions of dollars the Americans printed. We must do that and remove this huge legacy debt. It was not created by the taxpayers or ordinary people but by speculators and banks who were allowed to do so by the regulators, who were well paid but did not do their job. The same is true of Ministers and officials of the previous Government, of which I was a supporter.

A crazy situation took place. Banks used to ring us up, tormenting us. In my business, if I was considering buying a machine, the company would tell the banks about it, or they had some way of finding out. On the following morning, I would find four cars in my yard, with one bank competing with another to give me a loan. If two small farmers wanted to buy the same 30 acres, a bank would finance both of them unknown to each other up to a crazy amount of money. That should never be allowed. I know that safeguards against such practices are built into the Bill, and I welcome that.

The Minister of State is a business man and knows all about this. He must do so, to have been so long in business. I know he is doing his best, but his best is not good enough because these people do not care about the Oireachtas or the law. Bankers have gone abroad, having broken the country. One banker in Bray was invited to the Garda station in Bray for questioning. We did not see any paddywagons pulling up at his door to take him away. On the other hand we saw five detectives coming in three cars to the house of the former Deputy, Ned O'Keeffe, in connection with an alleged misdemeanour amounting to a couple of thousand euro. What is wrong with the country? We cannot deal with the big bad fellows but we can deal with a former Member who gave good service to this House as a Minister of State and Deputy for decades, as did his family before him. He suffered humiliation and trauma. His wife had gone shopping when he was arrested. He is recovering from medical treatment. The detective gardaí did not want to give him time to change from casual clothes into the more formal attire he always wears in public.

This is what the public find so horrible. Ordinary politicians and ordinary people of every hue can be hauled before the courts and made a show of. Of course, everyone is innocent until proven guilty, but if one throws enough muck it will stick and if a dog gets a bad name it will never go away. The big fellows receive a telephone call and are asked if they are available to come to the Garda station. What is worse, who informed the media that three Garda cars from Cobh - and what did that cost - were on their way to Ned O'Keeffe's home? Who alerted the media to be waiting at the Garda station? It was disgusting. I accept the media must do their job, but who informed them on that occasion? Why should they be informed? The man is innocent until proven guilty. If he has to be brought in for questioning, that is fine. I do not say anyone should be above the law but there should be fair play. That was not good enough, it is not good enough and it is going on wholesale.

Ordinary business people are being driven to distraction by bankers, the Revenue and all the agencies of the State. I compliment the south Tipperary coroner who spoke at the inquest of a good friend of mine who had a business of long standing. Revenue officials came to him at one o'clock one day and said they would be back at three o'clock to collect X number of euro, which he did not have. A customer came in at twenty minutes to two and found him dead, by his own hand, in his shop. That kind of bullying is going on and it is all because we are trying to pay back this bank debt, which we cannot. We did not accrue this debt. We do not owe it. We could pay back half of it, or thereabouts. I am not an expert in figures. We should pay back a manageable amount.

Every country is in the same boat. That is why people are rebelling in Greece and elsewhere. In next month's election we might see the hard left gaining support in Greece. I am not against the left but I have worries about the hard left and where it might bring us. If this spreads, what kind of Europe will we have? It might come here too. I was a supporter of the previous Government. The present Government promised to do so much. It promised to burn the bondholders but burned no one except the people. Will the people accept that the next time? I would be fearful they would not and of where they might go with their votes. We have a democracy and we must respect that. The people are entitled to vote for whoever they wish. However, we must show the cause. We cannot trick the people. They are too sensible for that and too hard-hit in their pockets and their hearts.

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