Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I owe a big debt of thanks and gratitude to Fianna Fáil colleagues present and in particular to Deputy Michael McGrath for bringing forward this legislation. It is shameful that the Government has not attended to the huge problem that has arisen and that has been staring it in the face since 2008 or 2009. Because my time is short, I intend to read a statement into the record. The real banking inquiry should be what Members are talking about. The other one being held by the Oireachtas joint committee is looking in the rear-view mirror. Here is where the problem lies and here is where the citizens are hurting, as Deputy Ó Cuív has noted. The bank boards and the auditors clearly and measurably are at fault. I have evidence to hand in a one and a half page statement, which I will read into the record because I do not have enough time.

A couple of things happened within the last 48 hours. The chief executive of Bank of Ireland announced with pride that profits of €900 million are being reported in the most recent results, a turnaround of €1.5 billion due to the real hard work of the bank and its people. He stated the bank made mistakes and that he was on the team that made the mistakes. Why is he not paying for them? I have been involved pro bonoin five cases with the two so-called pillar banks where, again on the evidence, they are out of control operationally. They are not even communicating with the customers who are being beaten up and assaulted financially. I use those words advisedly because I have had 20 years of experience in banking and restructuring loans and coming to agreements. There are no agreements at present. Although they say there are agreements, there are not; there are guns to the heads of customers.

Split mortgages are a joke and are not done for businesses or people. It is obscene to believe that 60,000 mortgages in arrears for more than a year means, at a multiple of three per household, that 180,000 citizens are in deep distress. How dare a temporary investor like Wilbur Ross make a profit of €500 million on an investment in Bank of Ireland guaranteed - maybe not on paper but in reality - by the State? He, the most powerful and influential director on the bank’s board, put in place a policy of no loan write-downs or write-offs in restructurings. How obscene was that? He has even left the country.

The Government should wake up out of its arrogance. It accuses us on this side of scaremongering but this is reality. I told the late Brian Lenihan in 2009 that there will be true losses in the Irish-owned banks of €65 billion on commercial-type loans and a minimum of €30 billion on the mortgage loan books. That is exactly what occurred. Deputy Troy gave an example of negative equity. There is no such thing as negative equity; it is a loss. It is forcing a loss or realising a loss by putting in receivers on loans. My paper shows how the banks and their boards should be collectively at the banking inquiry answering questions about the evidence in their balance sheets of how they broke the domestic banking sector by bringing the system from three times to over five times the size of national income in six years. That was a recipe for a Ponzi result to a credit pyramid bust.

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