Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Two week ago I raised in this House the matter of the predatory behaviour by our banks with regard to tracker mortgages. As I said at the time, most of the bank robbers are now deep in the boardrooms and not on the streets as used to be the case. I believe it was important to speak on the issue, because episodes like the tracker mortgage scandal reveal where the real centres of power lie in the State. The position is that there is no law for the bankers and the rich and another law for the rest of us. That has only been compounded by the revelations contained in the so-called Paradise Papers. Unprecedented levels of tax evasion or aggressive tax avoidance have been uncovered.

Prior to the American Civil War the rallying cry was, "No taxation without representation". That was a very noble aspiration. It is a principle that has now been completely reversed, especially in this country. It is clear that all of those who pay little or no taxation, including bankers, have all of the representation. They have access to, and control the levers of power and have rights that the ordinary working person could not dream of.

During the 2016 debate in this House on the Panama Papers, the then Finance Minister, Deputy Michael Noonan, said he was bringing forward legislation to enable tax defaulters to make a qualifying disclosure to Revenue. He was very good. The Minister went on to say that defaulters who have used offshore accounts or assets in their evasion will "find themselves in a very difficult position if they do not come forward quickly to regularise their affairs with Revenue". Could the Taoiseach tell me how many of those people have come forward? I did not see any queues outside the Department of Finance but perhaps the Taoiseach knows the figures. I suggest that not many came forward. Institutional tax avoidance still appears to be rampant in the State.

AIB held an EGM last Friday. Will the Taoiseach indicate whether the Minister for Finance was present at the meeting? If not, he should have been, given that we have more than a 90% stake in the bank. Colm Keena reported in The Irish Times on Monday details about AIB. He referred to leaked files from the Isle of Man offices of the offshore law firm Appleby. The files reveal Government-owned AIB refused to give the Revenue Commissioners access to data on its offshore customers when responding to a court order in 2015. The bank refused to obey the courts of this land.

For most people on the outside listening to this today, and indeed for most of us here, the ins and outs of the international tax system are a complete labyrinth. It is deliberately designed so that ordinary people cannot understand it. What is not hard to understand however is the sense that such episodes reveal a large gaping hole at the heart of our democracy. The massive double standard that operates in this arena rightly infuriates people. In the meantime the Taoiseach makes great play about acting the tough guy with respect to social welfare fraud. He said they should be named and shamed. Unless I missed it, I did not see the Taoiseach outside the headquarters of AIB or Bank of Ireland with placards and hashtags saying that bankers should be named and shamed and that they should be outed. It is a case of one law for the rich.

The Taoiseach knew all about the banking scandal in 2011 when he was on the finance committee. He was told by Friends of Banking Ireland and other organisations yet the merry-go-round continues. I want to know if the Taoiseach attended the EGM and what it was all about.

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