Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

That is a new one in the world of business.

We have been told for a long time that these banks were of strategic importance, but they were closed for four years. I challenged a banker in AIB about 18 months ago about this. I asked him to tell me the truth on whether the banks were open or closed. He said that if I wanted the "Goddamn truth", then yes, the bank was closed. He said that they would not dare risk giving money to anybody in this country at the moment, unless they were gold-plated. The truth is that they have failed to deliver and have not been of service to the people.

In its programme for Government, the governing parties stated that they would bring in a strategic investment bank. This evening I got my parliamentary assistant to check how many times I raised the issue of a strategic investment bank in this House, and I found out that I have asked 11 times whether the Government would deliver on this promise. Every time I asked, I was told that the Government would do so, but it is now two and a half years later. I am not a fan of Francois Hollande, but when he stood for election, he told the French people that he would introduce a strategic investment bank if he was elected. He was in power five months when he set up a strategic investment bank with a lending facility of €42 billion. This Government is in power for two and a half years, but we have no strategic investment bank. Such a bank would mean so much to Irish business.

The Government set targets for the banks for lending to small and medium businesses. A friend of mine had an overdraft of €50,000 with one of the pillar banks. A few weeks ago he got a letter in the post from his bank manager telling him the overdraft was cancelled, and that he would have to arrange a meeting about it. He spoke to the bank manager within a week. The overdraft was reinstated and this qualified as new lending for the bank. That €50,000 overdraft was cancelled and then reinstated, and it qualifies as new lending. This allows the banks to claim they are lending. Most of the SME owners that I know get loans simply to pay off debt. So little money has gone into investment in the domestic economy in the last four or five years. It is frightening.

We often talk of a lost generation due to emigration of young people, and this is true. However, there is also a lost period for the domestic economy over the last five years that will have repercussions for a long time.

It is lost and it is not coming back. The domestic economy will recover to a degree in time. Of course it will, as night follows day. It has to recover some time but we have lost five good years. The Government could have had a strategic investment bank in place and could have done a lot to help those people, but it did not.

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