Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I too welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate on this Bill. The Minister, Deputy Noonan, and Acting Chairman, Deputy Jack Wall, are, like me, from rural constituencies. If ever there was a case of closing the stable door when the horse has bolted this is it. Not only has the horse bolted, it has been to Cheltenham, Aintree and other places in the world and has probably at this stage been slaughtered and is being sold worldwide as a burger. However, I do not blame the Minister for this. While I salute the work he has been doing since taking up office two years ago, this is farcical.

What has happened to our country is an outrage. As stated by a previous speaker the former Minister for Finance, other Ministers, their advisers, the Financial Regulation and the bankers all played while Rome burned, which is an outrage. It is an indictment on this House and our justice system that none of these people have been brought before the courts and charged with fraud or any other crime. I do not propose to be judge, jury and executioner. I would not like to be either. Every man and woman charged with a crime is entitled to their day in court. No person, regulator or otherwise, has been held to account for their reckless behaviour. The banks shovelled out money to everybody. A person seeking a loan to buy a house was almost forced to take additional finance to cover the cost of purchasing an SUV and a foreign holiday. People could get loans of any amount. It was all about greed because those giving the loans were receiving huge commissions. There was no regulation. Why do we pay regulators? Are we paying them to fall asleep at the wheel? These questions must be asked.

This Credit Reporting Bill 2012 is a waste of time. It is feeble effort by the Minister, Deputy Noonan, and his officials to close the gate several years after the horse bolted. As a man from my county who died about 15 years would say, "All we have now in this country is fools and horses and most of the horses are nearly dead". It is proposed to microchip dogs. It is a pity given the reckless behaviour of our bankers and regulators that they had not been microchipped. What they did was just short of national sabotage. Their recklessness has wreaked havoc on people's lives. Like other members, I met representatives from the Ballyhea says No campaign outside Leinster House this morning, although I had to leave early as I was due to speak in the House on CAP reform. Ballyhea is not 100 miles from the Minister's home turf.

Neither this Government or its predecessor ever sought a write-down. The Labour Party, in terms of its promise if elected to burn the bondholders has been, following the result of the by-election today in Meath east, reduced to a mudguard. I mean no disrespect to the Acting Chairman, Deputy Wall, who is a decent man. Hell's fire was not going to be as hot as what they had planned but all they did was fall into line. Hence, the result of by-election in Meath east. I do not wish any ill to the Acting Chairman, Deputy Wall, who is a long-time member of what I recognise as the old Labour Party rather than of the new one, the so-called remnants of the stickies who knew how to do everything, including print money but did not know how to get a write-off. Fine Gael did not seek one either, which is shameful. What is the Government afraid of that it cannot stand up to its so-called masters-crucifiers? This is Holy Week. Every Irish man, woman and child has been crucified on the cross for the next 40 years by the so-called great deal achieved by the Government. One would think given all the clapping and laughing that it was manna from heaven. As I said then, the laugh will be on the other sides of their faces before the electorate is finished with them. The Labour Party felt a cold chill this morning following the final result of the Meath East by-election.

The people are frustrated by the fact that nobody in this House is taking responsibility for what they do or standing up to the bankers. The late Deputy Brian Lenihan and all of us who voted for the bank guarantee were lied to by the banks about the extent of the problem. Voting for that was the biggest mistake of my political life. I regret that. Fine Gael also supported it. The Labour Party promised it would have nothing to do with it but all we got when this Government was elected was a change of seating arrangements. People are outraged. I disagree with my colleague, Deputy Finian McGrath, that voting should be compulsory. People have lost all faith in democracy. There is no democracy. It is now a case of Heil Angela rather than Heil Hitler. Despite the efforts of those who fought here in Easter 1916, which is to be commemorated during the 1916 centenary celebrations, democracy has gone out the window. I understand the Government proposes to call the election after that.

That is all in the Government's great plan - that is if the mudguard does not fall off or the screws do not come loose and disappear like the snow off the Dublin Mountains today. A bit of sunshine at this spring time and then it was gone. The Spring tides and the Gilmore tides might be well gone. The tide has turned. As the Minister said, after the liquidation of IBRC, the boat has left the shore. It has left the shore. I saw more reckless behaviour the night the Minister came into this House and introduced the legislation to wind up IBRC. I challenged him on the floor of the House that night and spoke to him afterwards. I blamed the Attorney General here. How could he give us such reckless advice on that Bill that a stay could be put on any court case against IBRC that had been initiated in the courts. The Minister said that could not happen, but it was in the Bill, and I challenged him in writing the following day. Thankfully, a High Court judge decided last week that was not the case, that there is a Constitution, and that the citizens, whether they be small or great, are entitled to protection from the Constitution. We could not allow people with court cases before the courts to be wound off. How could the Minister continue to allow IBRC pursue people while the lay litigants could not pursue IBRC? Children in first class in national school with respect for the Constitution would know that is wrong. The Attorney General has cost us the court case, and there is the cost in terms of former Attorneys General and all their advice. We cannot tackle the people with the big pensions. We cannot tackle the fat cats in RTE. We cannot tackle any big problem, but we can screw the ordinary people, introduce emergency legislation any day of the week, and persecute the ordinary people of this country, but we cannot touch the fat cats, the former taoisigh, the former Ministers for Finance, the former Regulators, the former bankers or the former advisers. They are all on big pensions, and we cannot touch them. We are like a horse that is afraid of water and shies away from it, but we can ride a coach and four through the ordinary people of Ireland. We have done that for too long.

This Credit Reporting Bill is not worth the paper on which it is written because it is inept and feeble. I see the ECB and the IMF, our new masters, written all over it. This is an insult to the people we are supposed to represent, and the Minister should remove some elements from it.

Most people, whether they are small business people or home owners, want to pay the debts they incurred. All they want is time to do that, respect and support. Why can they not have their mortgages extended? I meet a blank wall when I deal with bankers. If one wants to meet a bank manager, one is told he or she has been transferred to some other department or area. I meet people who want to pay and will pay their debts. They are not the people who will not pay anything. I am talking about ordinary people who have commitments in terms of their families, homes and so on.

As I said, 94% of people have been in arrears for several months and are unable to pay their mortgages. They are not cavalier people. These people are in the minority, and we must be alert to them. They have hijacked this situation, they had no intention of paying back the money and they have moved off.

The Minister, Deputy Noonan, has left the Chamber but I want to raise an issue with the Minister of State that I raised on Leaders' Questions this morning, and I also raised it on the Order of Business, as did Deputy Joan Collins. We have talked about the gardaí and the way they are being persecuted. We know many of them are in sad circumstances. The Minister of State will know some of them in his county; if he does not he is not active on the ground. They are there in their dozens. In the case of a married couple in the Garda, in particular, they cannot meet their payments. We know that legislation prescribes that they cannot be in a state of indebtedness. When I and my colleague, Deputy Collins, asked the Tánaiste, Deputy Gilmore, about this, we got glib answers. Our questions were not answered. Will the Personal Insolvency Bill allow members of An Garda Síochána to be dealt sensitively? My understanding from previous legislation covering employment and enlistment in the force, is that it will not. Can we can have plain honest speak? We had plenty of it when the Minister of State was in opposition but we have had not honest speak since. I want those questions answered in this debate, and they must be answered.

There Bill contains lovely language but we are arriving on the playing field after the game is over and has been played out. Five years later we have this Bill, the policy background to which takes account of the current credit reporting system, the problems that may arise and the reasons for the policy change. Somebody has woken up in the Department and said we must have a policy change in regard to lending policy. We had it when we had bank managers, with whom I and my father before me dealt, who were sensible people. Some of them are still in place but they were sidelined by the whizz kids, the senior bankers - the greed people. When they did not want to lend recklessly they were sidelined and put to bed. I can name one of them from my own county who retired recently, Mr. James Ryan. He told me how hard he fought but he was told he was old fashioned. He did not have the buzz factor or the whizz look and it was considered that he did not know the position but he knew his customers. He knew their ability to pay and what they could pay.

Reference is made to the current system. There is no statutory obligation on financial institutions to report credit data and no central responsibility for credit data. There is no credit responsibility in the Central Bank for the behaviour of the marauding gangsters it is sending out who are wrecking havoc with people's family businesses and small businesses. The Minister of State might lift his head and listen to what I am saying. We have been told that the Minister intends to pass legislation to repossess people's home. The Central Bank - I have met the people there and discussed this matter - has a nice little code of conduct that it expects its constituent lenders to adhere to but the people there do not give a damn about it. I was in with the managing director of a bank recently, which I name, Friends Friend, and he told me his hire purchase agreement and lease agreement were far stronger than a court order. That is the respect he has for the law of the land. He was enabled, entitled and empowered to send out gangsters, fraudsters, a third force militia to break down people's houses and doors and seize their property and goods. At least it was confined to the sheriff under normal legislation but there is a banker's code of conduct, if you would not mind. This is a code of conduct that was renewed only a year ago because the previous code was not being adhered to. It was updated, shuffled and put in nicer language but, effectively, there is no code of conduct for the banks. The bottom line is the banks' credit balance and restoring the economy.

Each of the three so-called pillar banks were told to spend €3 billion in lending to small businesses. They failed to do so and were brought in and asked to do so again but again they failed. All they are interested in is restoring their credit balance to be fit for purpose again and to go out and make more profits.

We see on a weekly basis that lending institutions - there is no credit control in place in this respect or no data - are selling off their loan books. People all the over the country have telephoned me and said they want to do deals with the banks. They want to sort out their problems, cut a deal and pay 60% to 70% of their loans or whatever figure on which they can reach agreement. They are treated glibly but yet we can read a week later where a bank has now sold off its full loan book for 19% or 20%. It is amoral, disgusting and disgraceful. If we read further we find that a coterie of well-paid individuals within that bank have formed a new company. I think any law will state that if I take a loan with bank X, the loan should stay with that bank; the bank should not be allowed to sell it on to some other greedy vultures who want to make a fast buck again and want to take 90% or 100% off the people to whom they have lent the money, even though they have bought the loan book. Many of them have bought it and sold it to companies outside this country. We saw what happened with Bank of Scotland Ireland and the huge fraud that was perpetrated on this country, and as bad as that is, it is being perpetrated on the British taxpayers, and no one seems to give a damn. Are the bankers, as I call them the gangsters, rather than the politicians, running this country? Those are the people I see running it. The Minister has come in with this feeble effort.

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