Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I too want to lend my voice of support to amendment No. 42 and a number of similar amendments. However, it all seems to be a waste of time and energy. As I said last night, although I hate being repetitive, Deputy Boyd Barrett is right about how Joe Bloggs and Mary Public would react if they knew what was going on with the cartels and the regulators who are in bed with them. We have regulators for everything in this country and we are getting new ones every day, and they are absolutely useless, toothless and fruitless. They are out only for themselves and get into cosy positions with these big cartels.

There is no will from this Government. It is not that we are a couple of hundred years old as a State. We only have our freedom in this country a limited time. We will have a very important commemoration in two years. If the Soloheadbeg ambush men came back, they would not waste bullets shooting the Government. They would line the Ministers up and shoot ten of them with the one bullet. Think of Dan Breen, Seán Treacy, Seán Hogan - those great men. Men on both sides died. For what? To be raped and plundered by vultures and for the Government of the day to acquiesce in it. The Government is cushioning them. It is bringing them into the bowels of the Department and asking them what they want it to do.

The argument might be made that we needed some funding when we hit the crash. Why did we hit the crash? It was naked greed and the regulator was asleep. The regulator should have been prosecuted, but not at all. We could not prosecute the regulators because they are doing what Governments allowed them to do and not the jobs they are paid to do. Where are their contracts? We now have public interest directors in the banks. It is a joke. They are just taking up space at a boardroom table. They are doing absolutely nothing. I questioned the Minister's predecessor, Deputy Noonan, several times about them. I asked if they were going to be held accountable and what was their role. He told me that they had no public interest role. He told me that agus é ag suí sa suíochán ansin. He told me that himself. They do not have a public interest role. It is just optics. It looks good. The big game goes on.

What the banks are doing to the people is linked with the courts. There is very little justice in the courts for unfortunate families and small farmers. Some are from the Minister of State's constituency. He knows them well.

They are of hurling fame. I refer to the blackguarding of the individual and his family, including his daughters and sons, at this hour, last week and the week before in the Four Courts. It is terrorism. We are aware of war crimes in various wars. What I refer to are war crimes being perpetrated against the people. It is terrorism. It is emotional terrorism. Mr. Tony O'Brien was criticising people who were concerned about families they believe, rightly or wrongly, are sick because of a vaccine. I will not say whether they are right or wrong. Mr. O'Brien called it emotional terrorism. I am referring to the real emotional terrorists and bullies. War crimes are being committed by the banks and their thugs, with the repossession agents. They are nothing better than thugs. I was in the Minister of State's native county to see them in action. They represent a third force. It was like guerrilla warfare, with balaclavas and Alsatians. They were tearing down a house. When the Garda superintendent and inspector were asked to defend a woman standing at her own gate, they turned their backs. I met that superintendent in the Garda station in the Minister of State's town. The latter did not turn up. He might not remember it.

A poor man and his boy were kicked and beaten senseless by thugs - a guerrilla force in a democratic country. The boy, who was 14, was nearly killed as he punctured his lung. A fire brigade paramedic who was asleep in his house heard the rumpus and attended to the boy. Only for him, the boy would have been killed. It took two hours for a Garda squad car to come. Were there prosecutions? No. I am ashamed to say some of the thugs were from my own county. They had carried out ten repossessions on the night. It is a lucrative, greasy, messy, disgusting practice. It is as bad as the drug trade. It is every bit as bad as it because in involves blood money from ordinary citizens. Year in, year out, we are failing here to pass legislation to protect the people. It is despicable and reprehensible in every case.

Deputy McGuinness and others mentioned Capita. This agent and others like it are just mercenaries. That is all they are. I mentioned a mercenary last night and the Ceann Comhairle stopped me. They asked advisers what to do and went off again. The agents are no better than mercenaries who went to various wars all over the world and killed as a career. It is despicable and it is happening under our watch. I do not agree with Deputy Boyd Barrett on many things but he is 100% right. If the people knew about it, there would be complete uproar, and rightly so. Small businesspeople and SMEs took out loans and the banks shovelled money at them. They could not keep the bankers away from their doors, in that there were loans for this and loans for that. When the crash came we all suffered but there is no mercy shown, only selling on to the next sleazy vulture fund at rates of 17%, 20% and 30%. The businesspeople themselves might come up with 80%, being the asking value, but there would be no sale to them. It is dirty, messy, disgusting and abhorrent to any right-thinking person. Why is has not sunk in here among successive Ministers for Finance and the permanent government, I do not know. I do know part of the permanent government is comprised of the regulators. A very good friend of mine, a very decent businessman, Mr. Seamus Maye, who was himself destroyed by a cartel, spoke at an event quite close to the constituency of the Minister of State, namely, the Kilkenomics festival in Kilkenny. I ask people to look at the video. We have plenty of regulators but no regulation. We have no regulation of the banks. I am not blaming the ordinary staff in the banks but those deep in the board rooms. The robbers are living inside them now and they are creating the policies on how they can rob the people blind without any gun or violence. They just rob and steal from them. We have the tracker mortgage issue and everything else. I am involved with the Friends of Banking Ireland and I have a template of a letter that is being sent to people to inquire into their circumstances. We are getting amazing responses back. People are just getting an offer of €10,000 or €20,000 in pay-back money or go-away money to compensate for the robbing and the stealing.

A man went down to the court last week and said he was overcharged by the bank by €260,000. It is not a matter for the courts, he was told. Unfortunately, many eminent people in the courts and their families are up to their necks in hock to the banks. They should not be sitting to hear such cases. It is quite clear that if they had any moral compass, they would remove themselves from such cases. It is a merry-go-round. The merry-go-round gets murkier and dirtier but it is like ice on a pond. When the sun comes one of these days, the ice will melt and you all will be submerged. The Government has the opportunity to change this but will not.

We are getting back our financial independence somewhat. Why do have we to be lying down, licking these people and letting them run amok among our own citizens? They are running amok and destroying lives. I referred last night to suicides, marriage break-ups and children in awful situations. There is also the homelessness crisis, which the Government will not deal with. More people are being made homeless on an hourly basis. There is something very sinister at the heart of the Government and our institutions, which are in a cabal with the people I have spoken about.

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