John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

When the banks were in trouble they came to the Minister and Government of the time and were bailed out. They obviously told lies about how they were fixed at that time. There might have been a different complexion on the matter had the Minister known everything, but the banks were saved and now, when people have to be saved, they are telling untruths by saying that this has to be done for Europe. We now know that they do not and that there is a mechanism whereby they can park an awful lot of this debt, work down through it and have their balance sheets right for Europe while at the same time helping the people in Ireland who are affected by these distressed mortgages. There is a lot more that can be done but they just will not do it.

Deputy Kelleher mentioned interest rates. Following the recent report on community banking, why would the Minister not hear of introducing the model? Sparkasse in Germany is offering tracker mortgages at 1.3% or 1.5% but we cannot do it here. The very same banks are making €1.5 billion a year and do not pay tax. Some of these other fellows have charitable status. It just does not make sense. It beggars belief that the Government will not take on the banks. I am not asking the Minister to interfere in their business; I am asking him to set out the demand that they exercise some sort of social conscience around the remaining mortgages currently in the banks to prevent people from being dragged through court, losing their homes and further complicating local authority housing lists.

There is a social consequence and cost here that no one seems to be measuring. I encourage the Minister to take that step, bring the banks in and force them to a position where they acknowledge all of what was done for them and for them to do something for the country in return.

Many businesses that broke down during the bad times were cited on the Credit Bureau and will not get money from banks for seven years, so they cannot get loans to rescue a viable business and keep it going, yet we have credit unions with €7 billion that want to have a role but they are regulated by a Central Bank that is protecting the main banks. That does not make sense. If the Minister were to exercise some form of authority over them and talk to them they might release the money into the economy and we might get houses built and businesses at local level supported by a credit union movement or community banking movement that understands what local economies are all about. We might have more competition and less of the protectionism that is going on between the banks. Is it not amazing that they all entered into the tracker mortgage scandal and adjusted their books around the same time? The Minister says they have to rebuild their balance sheets after that but they are only giving back to the people the money they stole from them. Now they have to be dragged before committees where they started by telling us that there were 4,000 affected customers but that went up to 17,000. They could not even count the numbers they had tricked and conned out of their money. It is only the customers' money that is being given back to them. I would give no quarter to the banks. They are not treating the Minister fairly and they are not being honest with the State, once again.

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