Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

It might surprise the Minister to hear that I agree with many of the sentiments he expressed at the end of his contribution. I do think we need to look to the future and chart a strategic road ahead. This is essentially what the Minister outlined with regard to prioritising investment and political energy in key areas that can form the foundations of a balanced and sustainable economic future and development for the country and its citizens. I agree completely with the Minister on that point.

Karl Marx said: "The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living." Stephen Dedalus made a similar comment in James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It is true and could not be more accurately applied to what is happening in our economy at the moment, where the past does weigh like a nightmare on the brains and lives of the living. It is preventing us from moving down the road of the future, and this needs to be addressed if we are going to get beyond the current paralysis.

"Paralysis" is a fairly accurate term for where we are. This is another favourite Joycean term. Dublinersis all about the paralysis of the city and Irish society and culture at the start of the 20th century. For the past ten years we have witnessed paralysis, more or less. The Minister might point to the odd incremental improvement and we may agree or disagree sometimes but things are stagnant and, as a result, there is a great deal of despair and demoralisation and many people are struggling. The reason for that is the Government and the previous Government hoped that if they put the banking system back on the rails and imposed a little more regulation and tried to influence its priorities, it would begin to inject life into the economy, but it has not done so.

It is not just about saying the Government was wrong and all the rest of it. We can argue that. I stress that my amendments fall far short of what I would propose. If I had a choice, we would send people marching into Bank of Ireland and AIB and boot the current boards out, take control of them and tell them what to do because we funded them. The Minister will not do that. I can say that but, having said it, we have to move on. I will campaign for that politically in other ways but in so far as there is a consensus regarding a strategic investment bank, which I welcome - it might be short of what I would like but at least it is pointing in the right direction - the question is what is its mandate. It is not only a question about the past, although my amendments partly try to address legacy issues, it is also about the future.

I do not know what is the Government's position but the view has been expressed by Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin and Independents that the mandate of the banking industry in this country and in Europe is too narrow. I drew the contrast with the American banking system whose mandate predates the crash. Housing and employment are key priorities of that system. If we have rightly recognised the need for a strategic bank, surely the strategic priorities should not be only about SMEs. That is fine, although one might ask why it is not called the SME corporation bank if that is its only priority. I am not absolutely clear about the Minister's view on that. I accept SMEs are a priority but is the Minister saying housing finance should not be a key priority of a strategic bank? If so, I disagree with him not just because of the particular crisis we are facing but also, fundamentally, regarding what the mandate of such a bank should be.

I ask him to note the fact that KfW, the bank to which he is looking to co-invest in this bank, has housing finance as one of its key mandates and imperatives. The very bank the Minister has involved in this process, and which presumably at some level he is trying to copy or to take aspects of what it does and import into our strategic bank, has housing finance as part of its mandate, which is correct. Why would we not do the same? This should be a priority anyway, regardless of our legacy problems but it should be even more of a priority because of them. They are a dead weight on the economy and on hundreds of thousands of our citizens who are unable to participate and function in the economy properly and that is acting as a serious drag.

I raise a slight philosophical point. I do not know whether Minister has ever read the philosopher Jacques Derrida. I will go on a little tour.

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