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

Up to 30,000 families have had their lives irreparably damaged by the criminal greed, misconduct, arrogance and brutality of the banks. People have endured many types of suffering as a result, including anxiety, depression, years and houses lost and relationships put under intolerable strain. This was done by incredibly profitable banks run by obscenely well paid executives who got huge bonuses, in some cases while the banks were in public ownership. We now get belated apologies, statements and promises. It is too late for that and, in any case, we do not believe them.

The banks cannot be trusted to deliver. They have made such promises before and have not delivered. Will the redress and compensation that may be paid be adequate? Will it redress the loss and hardships that have been suffered? Will everybody who deserves it get it and will there be consequences for those who imposed this suffering and committed this crime against these families? The answer to almost all of those questions is "probably not" if all the banks are going to have to endure is admonition from the Minister. There needs to be a criminal investigation followed by the prosecution and jailing of those responsible. Nothing less will put manners on these bank robbers or make them believe they will not be able to get away with this in the future.

We know that because this is not an isolated example. It is part of a long litany of crimes, scandals, misconduct and malpractice by the banks. It is happening now in the equally big scandal involving the obscene interest rates of almost double those available in Europe being charged to variable rate mortgage holders. It is pure extortion and profiteering. Other examples are the rotten treatment of distressed mortgage holders and the suffering that has been imposed upon them and the payment protection insurance scheme and its mis-selling to thousands of people. Before that there was reckless lending to developers and irresponsible lending that landed people in massive debt, upon whose properties the banks then moved in and imposed more suffering on the borrowers.

As Fintan O'Toole pointed out, banking culture in Ireland has been shown to be toxic, rotten and profit-ridden since the DIRT scandal and that has been engendered by the two main political parties in this country. That is the point. When those people wrecked the entire economy, what message was sent by the political establishment? It sent out a message that it would bail out the banks, there would be no consequences for those responsible and as soon as the rest of the country had been made pay for the crimes of the banks and bail them out, the State would reprivatise them. Everything the banks have done to holders of tracker and variable rate mortgages and all the victims of scandals in recent years has been to improve their attractiveness to foreign investors because the Government said from the start it was going to privatise them and Fianna Fáil agreed. Why would banks do anything other than what they did, given that was the message that was sent? If the Minister is serious about this, there should be criminal investigations and prosecutions, caps on variable interest rates for other mortgage holders, a closing of tax loopholes that allow banks to pay no tax whatsoever, the sale of the banks back to the private market should be stopped and some control asserted over them in order that they be in public control and can begin to serve the public interest rather than the greed of their shareholders and executives.

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