Jim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

-----and they are bringing the whole issue of IBRC, Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, into it.

Since time immemorial when assets are sold at a knockdown price, someone will always benefit from it. We have seen that the length and breadth of the country as a result of the extremely harsh recession this country has endured. Despite the financial hardship, there have been some extraordinary good deals - if that is what a businessperson would like to call them. That is how I would view it too. People have been at the receiving end of those deals. However, I am at a loss how we can criminalise the receiver - in other words, the person who purchases, for example, a hotel sold by a State-owned or other bank. I am at a loss how the person who has purchased that asset is in the wrong. Questions can be asked about the seller, as well as the mode of selling it and the ethics involved but I am at a loss as to why the purchaser has come to be the criminal.

While there was much furore outside the House about the perceived threat to parliamentary privilege, but which turned out to be nothing, there was little talk either inside or outside the House about the rights of a private citizen, irrespective of who they are. I resent how this has become the story about an individual. There is a wider question that needs to be asked and addressed at this stage, namely, the right of any citizen to privacy in their banking affairs or anything else. If I were a businessperson and I secured a good deal by negotiation or by some other procedure, invariably it would be the person who gifts that sale to me, or who gifts whatever, would be open to question. As a private citizen, I should not have my banking affairs and my name sullied, irrespective of my means or otherwise, and not be allowed challenge that. This is an issue which I have not heard anyone address. Some perspective needs to be brought to the debate. There are certain matters that are serious and need to be dealt with. All the running off on tangents that many commentators and many Members have done and the personalising of this, making it about an individual, are not helpful to the process, to the State and its citizens. The citizens are at a loss when they talk about it. I spent last weekend knocking on doors in Clonakilty and Bandon. Nobody on the doorsteps raised this issue with me. If anybody referred to, it was referred to as the Denis O’Brien issue, which I think is regrettable, as opposed to an issue of re-examining the accountability of officers of the State who did deals on assets belonging to the State by default. That would be a more correct and appropriate way of doing this.

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