Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is a tough one to follow but Deputy Penrose is right at every level. He is right logically, in his mind and in his heart. He has analysed the situation as it is. What is meant by bankruptcy? The banks ruptured this country. Deputy Catherine Murphy referred to the lending institutions. They are not lending institutions. They get a licence to take deposits. Only when they know how to lend properly can they use those deposits to generate activity and commerce in the economy.

Our banks are measurably guilty at a level of 80% for the asset price bubble on a credit pyramid that went out of control in the seven years from 2001 to 2008 and the €5 million banking inquiry has not even touched on it. That is how pathetic the inquiry was. Boards of directors of the domestic banks in this country went way out of control. They lent all the deposits - the savings of businesses and households - and ramped things up further on a cocaine-fuelled credit pyramid. They more than doubled the size of the domestic banking economy in five years. That is woefully guilty conduct. It left the people victims of the crash and we are now trying to bandage them with a sticky plaster one year bankruptcy term and a hesitancy in clearing the mess up in a manly sort of way. There is a suspicion that most of them are trying to hide things and are perhaps not being honest. It is laughable.

I read of the sanctions for non-co-operation or concealment by the bankrupt but the banks concealed everything. They concealed their balance sheets to such an extent, the last Government gave a blanket liabilities guarantee. This guarantee now has an easily identifiable residual of €25 billion in the Governor of the Central Bank's office desk. It is the so-called genius trick of our Minister for Finance to extend the promissory note of ten to 12 years into a long-dated promissory bond. He had no business doing that. On 18 February next, I hope Deputy Joan Collins will be vindicated in the Supreme Court. The Minister for Finance put the people on the line for €31 billion, at the time, without even legislation being passed in this Parliament. Some €25 billion is still outstanding. Let us think about that €25 billion. We should cancel it because there is no validity in it whatsoever. It has zero validity. If anyone thinks there is a validity to it, let them show it, because there is not. It is the losses of two private banks, namely, Irish Nationwide Building Society and Anglo Irish Bank-IBRC.

We hear people talking about bankruptcy and shame. There is no shame. It is a fact. If people do not have the assets to discharge their liabilities, that is just a fact. It can be compared to a collapse of their bodies. If their hearts are not working, they are just physically ill. That is okay. It does not matter. The cause of a disease or lack of health does not matter. The fact is that they are not well and one brings all the assistance to make them well again. One does not make them a little well or give them Lucozade when they need surgery.

The Minister stated:

I think Deputies will agree that this Bill represents an important milestone. [The Bill] comes at the right time.

What a load of nonsense. That is utterly pathetic. If the medicine or the surgery does not arrive at the time it is needed, it is a waste of time. The Government had five years and massive numbers to do certain things. It did not listen to some of the good ideas on this side of the House. It did not even listen to its own backbenchers. I had that experience because I was once in the Fine Gael party. It did not want to know some good ideas. It had the monopoly on wisdom.

If the Government really was compassionate for the Irish people, it would take on board those ideas. They are evidence-based and would make progress. They would cure ills and fix situations. However, the Government will not do that. If we take away the fig leaf of "the fastest growing economy in Europe" and look at the reality, we see that housing waiting lists are at their longest. The number of people waiting for hospital elective surgeries and procedures stands at 400,000. I appeal to God almighty. It is more than the population of Cork. Schools and universities are threadbare and our universities' rankings are slipping. We have homelessness. We have mortgage debt, with 38,000 people in arrears of two years or more. These are the realities.

It is argued that a relatively small number of bankruptcy cases feature particularly serious and flagrant levels of concealment by the bankrupt, for which there is currently no adequate deterrent. However, the banks fooled the last Government and are currently fooling this one. Does the Government believe there has been any serious or meaningful restructuring by the banks? There has been very little and I know this because I have been involved with a number of cases. It is a farce. The banks are out of operational control and do not know what is happening. The legal divisions of banks are sending correspondence, as are the arrears divisions. The people who are trying to arrange restructuring do not know where they are. That is the reality. I know because I am dealing with it.

Bank of Ireland, when it was lining up assets for transfer into NAMA, mysteriously reduced the prospective bill of lading, or transfer, of €16 billion into NAMA to €12 billion. How in the name of God, back in 2009, could one have a reduction in toxic loan portfolios to be transferred into NAMA? Anyone with even half a brain or half a day's experience in loan ledger management would know that it is impossible but the bank did it. Why? It was done because €4 billion at the then prospective discount rate of 30% amounts to €1.2 billion and that was the reduction of the requirement for recapitalisation which kept Bank of Ireland out of State majority control. The bank fooled us. It fooled us again when a consortium of five investors bought 35% of the bank for €1.1 billion. That was stupid. I told the Taoiseach at the time not to proceed but to pause. Wilbur Ross, who was a genius in his own interests, made €0.5 billion profit on his little proportion of that consortium. It was a one-way bet; he could not have lost. What genius allowed that to happen?

The Government should reorder its priorities and put the people of Ireland first rather than the establishment and the vested interests. However, it must do its homework because it has not done it yet. If the Government had done its homework, it would know what to do. The Government has failed, for instance, to send notices of assessment to the multi-national corporations on their profits which have been increasing since 2008. That would have been pushing an open door but the Government did not do it. It was afraid of its own shadow and was pathetic. It was prepared to allow banks to beat up small family businesses while shivering at the prospect of the multinational corporations leaving. Those corporations are now paying that money and the Government is scratching its head and asking where the extra corporation tax is coming from. The corporations know the game is up and that they have to pay it.

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