Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate. I congratulate our spokesperson on finance, who has brought forward credible proposals and has done so consistently over recent years. As the Minister of State rightly said, the mortgage issue, which is bedevilling so many families and which requires a resolution, is central in Irish life today. Just last week, the Minister effectively handed the banks a charter for home repossession. He previously enacted personal insolvency legislation which gives the banks the final say in that process. There will be no independent arbitrator, as advocated by Fianna Fáil and others, to solve the banking situation to ensure that families and banks are treated fairly. The Minister of State will then understand why I find it difficult to accept the political charge levelled here last week by the Taoiseach that there existed an axis of collusion between Fianna Fáil and the banks when it could easily be asserted that this Government is colluding with the banks to force hard-pressed homeowners into a state of penury. It seems to me and to many others that the Minister is using the situation in which people find themselves to drag out the process and hope the Government will get to the next election on the back of the mistakes of previous Administrations. The Irish people will not forgive him for that cynical approach to doing business.

Last week the Taoiseach informed the House that there was a need to establish the truth and to remember the thousands of victims - the property owners - of the axis of collusion that existed between Fianna Fáil and the bankers. The Taoiseach has consistently been at variance as to whom to attribute the blame. He had previously proclaimed that those so-called victims went mad. I remind the Minister of State of what the Taoiseach said to the World Economic Forum at Davos in 2012:

What happened in our country was that people simply went mad with borrowing ... The extent of personal credit, personal wealth created on credit, was done between people, banks - a system that spawned greed to a point that this went out of control completely with a spectacular crash.

Nowhere in his speech did he mention that the political establishment colluded with the rogue bankers to deliberately steer us towards a crash. Then again, how could he? He had already voted for it in this House. Indeed, at the time, he had also said that he supported the bank guarantee, insisting subsequently that far more wide-ranging action should have been taken by the then Administration. It is clear that the Taoiseach picks and chooses for political gain who and where he apportions blame for the country's economic woes, not forgetting that we slipped back into recession two weeks ago. The so-called get-tough approach with the banks on mortgage arrears seems to be another appeasement moving towards giving the banks what they want. One could assert that this Government is part of an axis of collusion with the banks to allow the banks to do what they want at the expense of homeowners. That has escaped the minds of many of the backbenchers who have used it in order to level political gain in recent weeks.

In his Ard-Fheis speech in 2008, the Taoiseach said that the nation had been damaged by the bankers' reckless behaviour and that they must be held to account. He said that under Fine Gael they will be held to account. I do not see any sign of that, nor any effort by the Government to hold the banks to account for past or current omissions. He said at the time that Fine Gael was the only party who would hold people to account for failure, irresponsibility and criminality. I do not see any of that whatsoever, and neither do the people who are finding themselves in extremely distressed situations as a result of the continued procrastination of the banking institutions. The people have lost faith and hope.

These words should have been uttered in this House last week when the Taoiseach was talking about the axis of collusion. He has consistently failed to address the issues relating to the decision to award the second mobile phone licence to Esat, when nine members of the current Administration were in Cabinet at the time. None of them has cried foul with regard to the collusion that existed, in my view, between the then Government and the company that won that licence.

The Minister must accept that he has failed abysmally in supporting homeowners who find themselves in a distressed state. He has sought to level political charges against my party and others. He has sought to apportion blame. He has done so in advance of the establishment of an inquiry. In my view, he has created an inability for such an inquiry to act impartially. All the while, the Taoiseach and the Government failed to address the findings of the Moriarty tribunal. They are prepared to splash around and suggest that there is an axis of collusion between my party and others.

Unless the Government, including the Taoiseach, addresses what happened in regard to the Moriarty tribunal and all its aspects, the Minister of State will not be in a position to come in here and level any charges.

See this speech in context