Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Ministers for this useful debate. Deputy McGuinness is in the Chamber. He has campaigned for this for a long time, which should be acknowledged. We need to see firm actions arising from this. It cannot just be a talking shop of a Thursday to fill out the Dáil schedule. The banking sector has seen enormous changes in the last ten years, and in the last five in particular. All of us in this Chamber will have seen these great changes, for example, the move towards online banking and away from traditional branch banking with its traditional human relationships. We are also still seeing the aftermath of the financial crash of 2008, 2009 and 2010. Banking played a role in that crash, which had consequences for the country and for people's lives. There was also the tracker controversy, which eroded further the trust and confidence that had already been eroded by the previous crash. It was extraordinary how long it took to resolve that and for the banks to fess up to it, as was what they put families and people through and what they were willing to do to customers, citizens of this State, to avoid responsibility. It eroded trust in a way which perhaps even the events of the period from 2008 to 2010 did not because we saw the way in which the banks were going to treat people individually.

When all of this is put together, one can see that this is a tumultuous time for banking. I want to pick up on a point Deputy Nash raised, which is that this tumult seems to be coming down on the shoulders of bank staff. That is completely out of order. In the case of Ulster Bank, when it made the announcement that it was pulling out, its staff, which had been loyal, excellent and the front face of an organisation in respect of which there had been a lot of controversy over the years, heard about the decision on national media. In a similar way, where there have been cutbacks in other banks, staff seem to be the last to hear rather than being consulted about their own lives and futures. A very firm message needs to be sent to the banks to the effect that, in this time of transformation and tumult, they must recognise their staff as partners in any decisions taken rather than as passengers. They must be central to the making of decisions rather than being considered an item under any other business. From our engagement with the Financial Services Union, it is very clear that bank staff around this country feel like passengers. They do not feel central. The Government needs to send a very clear message that this is not acceptable.

As I have said, the tracker controversy and the willingness of the banks to treat customers and families in the way they did were absolutely appalling but we are still seeing this in many instances around the country. They were proactive at the beginning of the Covid pandemic in offering payment breaks but the mantra is now "come and talk to us". That makes sense when one says it but we all know that many personal customers and business customers will stick their heads in the sand and not engage because the banks do not make it easy to engage. There is a fear of engaging with banks. There needs to be much more proactivity in that regard.

I will cite the pyrite and mica situation we are facing in Mayo, Donegal and Sligo at the moment. Mortgages held and owned by banks and which form part of their capital base are directly affected by houses crumbling. The asset on which the mortgage is held is devalued by pyrite and mica. Despite this, we have found a reluctance on the part of banks to proactively reach out to families and affected homeowners and to ask them to come and speak to them. It took some engagement with the banks for them to realise what was happening. This has a number of different effects. The asset base of the banks is affected and devalued. The daily lives of customers going through this are absolutely horrific and dealing with the banks is another pressure. There is an unwillingness to deal with the banks and a fear of doing so. Proactivity at the outset would have resolved that fear and would have been a much fairer way of dealing with the issue. That proactivity is beginning to be seen now, but only in some cases. It needs to be far greater and far more energetic.

Recent years have been marked by a number of international pull-outs. The review will be worthwhile to see. Banks in this country are accused of making massive profits and running away with them and yet we are not seen as a viable location for retail or business banking. When one sees NatWest pulling out after more than 100 years of service and when one sees KBC pulling out, leaving us with a model based on AIB and Bank of Ireland, one has to ask oneself questions. We all have to ask ourselves questions. Online banks such as Revolut and N26 are slowly coming in but many people are reluctant to go to them for full banking services. While that reluctance is there, the existing two banks, which will be the only ones left in the market, will play to it. They will continue to give us this system in which we have the most expensive mortgage rates in Europe, in which business loans are much more expensive than is justified by the cost of lending and in which the level of service and product we, as consumers, get is not what it should be in this kind of country. Until that changes and until we understand the reasons banks are not entering the Irish market and make the necessary changes, our consumers, businesses and communities will suffer.

When banks decide to pull out, they turn their backs on communities. It is very easy to say that people will go online or go the post office to do their banking but in many communities in which Bank of Ireland, for example, is closing branches, these are the last retail branches not only in the town, but in the region. Bank of Ireland tells them to do their business in their local post offices but in places such as Ballyhaunis, Charlestown, Kiltimagh and Tubbercurry, which is in Sligo but in the same area of Mayo and Sligo, the post office is in a local supermarket. It is not an appropriate place to do face-to-face banking, particularly where banking of a confidential nature is involved. Post office staff and managers were not even informed that this was coming at them before the announcement was made and so were not in a position to deal with the initial queries that came in. This again is an example of how customers and consumers are not on the banks' agenda, much as staff are not. Customers and consumers of banking services should also be partners as opposed to passengers but are instead lumped in with staff and are the last to know as decisions are taken far away.

Given that the State is a main shareholder in Bank of Ireland, when a bank is leaving a community, the building it is leaving should be offered to the community either through a community trust or the local authority, especially given what the taxpayer has contributed to keep the banks afloat. The same approach should be taken to Ulster Bank and NatWest. These buildings might be developed as ehubs, community hubs or broadband connection points where, with a little bit of imagination and thinking outside of the box, banking services could be delivered. Rather than delivering these services in a supermarket through a hatch beside the fruit and vegetables, the existing building, which has the equipment and IT infrastructure, could become a community hub where many IT facilities, including banking, would be offered. We could do this rather than the building being sold, adding value for the shareholders in the bank that is departing the community. That is something I would like to see pursued.

I welcome the Minister of State's personal commitment to the credit union movement, which is well known. I know he is pursuing that and that he sees the value of the credit union movement. Credit unions right across the country are absolutely mad to go lending at the moment. They want to do proper, responsible lending but are finding that they cannot do so. Many communities, customers and businesses want to avail of these services but cannot do so.

We speak of community-based banking. We have a model in the context of our credit unions but we do not give them the powers, energy or ability to be that community banking force to provide proper competition for what are, effectively, the two remaining main banks. We need a complete change of view of our credit unions. The credit union movement needs to be seen once again as a partner in banking, in our economy and in community and community regeneration, not as a passenger.

Business banking continues to be enormously challenging. The cost of products is much more than in many other markets. I am sceptical about the way the credit guarantee scheme is being rolled out. I do not think it is having the impact it should be having in the context of Covid and lending. I ask for more engagement from Government about that product to see how it is rolling out. We have franchised out State-backed lending to the banks. Is it doing what we want it to do and giving the kind of support to businesses that we need it to give? A hard, honest look needs to be taken at that in the coming weeks, not the coming months.

On green products, if we move people into major investments to decarbonise their homes and businesses, our bankings system needs to move with them. It needs to expand considerably its product range, not just greenwash existing products but make them accessible, encourage people to take them up, make them competitive in price and reflect where people are at in their family experiences.

There is a lot to consider. Tonight's debate should only be a start, not a full stop or a box ticked to keep Deputy McGuinness and the rest of us who looked for it happy for a few weeks. It needs to be something meaningful and a signal that this Dáil takes banking reform seriously.

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