Dáil debates

Thursday, 1 July 2021

Future of Banking in Ireland: Statements

 

5:10 pm

Photo of Martin BrowneMartin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This has been a bad year for Irish banking. When we speak of a bad time for banking, we are speaking about a bad time for our citizens. Banks have been allowed to continue with the tradition of making their customers pick up the bill for whatever impacts the institutions cause. We saw this on a grand scale during the financial crisis, when the Government of the day stood with the banking sector and ensured that each man, woman and child would have to foot the bill for its failings and bad practices and the fallout therefrom. This will continue for the foreseeable future. When I speak of bad times for the banking sector, those who suffer are predominantly the citizens of this country.

In recent years, there has been an effort to whitewash this grim time and to reimagine what happened. The most recent example of this was when the Taoiseach was rattled by a question from a Deputy who highlighted his unwillingness to support the Debenhams workers, despite the prior willingness to bail out the banks. In response, the Taoiseach said that the banks were not bailed out. He may wish for this not to have been the case and that his party, with the input of others, was not responsible for putting us in that situation. Unfortunately, however, An Taoiseach can no more change the past than he can do right by the sectors he threw under the bus this week.

When the banks suffer, there is a warped tradition that calls for the public to take the pain. The banking system in its current form can fail communities on a localised level as well. We have seen a number of examples of this so far this year. In February, we were informed that Ulster Bank was withdrawing from the market here. That was a major blow for customers, staff and communities and it was compounded when, in March, Bank of Ireland announced its intention to close more than one third of its branches in the South and more than half of its branches in the North from September.

In my constituency, branches in Cashel, Cahir and Templemore will close in September. This will leave Templemore with no bank branch whatsoever. Deputies can imagine how this will affect customers, who will have to travel to avail of in-branch services. This is where the post office network comes into it. Shortly after Bank of Ireland announced its intended branch closures, we were told certain services would be available from post office branches. In March, the Irish Postmasters Union warned that if the Government continues to fail to act quickly and decisively to keep post offices open, local banking services would be put at further risk. At the end of May, the same organisation warned of unrestrained closures from July if Government financial intervention is not forthcoming. The Kerr report and the Grant Thornton report both contained recommendations which the Government, for whatever reason, has chosen in large part to ignore. Who will bear the brunt of this if the Government continues to ignore the plight of the post office network? It will be our postmasters, their employees and the local communities that they serve.

In discussing the future of banking in Ireland, we cannot divorce it from the responsibilities that the Government has to ensure that banking services, the ability to transact locally and ease of access to banking consultation are available to all of our citizens, whether they live in urban or rural Ireland. The future of banking in Ireland is, therefore, dependent upon the Government that is there to lead it. The traditional parties of government are not the ones to do this. If they were, we would not have such a series of crises on our hands. We would not see instances where vulture funds were given the ability to lock young families out of homeownership. In my constituency, there is great faith in our credit union system. There is great reliance on our post office network on a number of levels as well. Their potential should be realised and extended.

In the past, Sinn Féin published a document looking at how public banking could work in Ireland. The decisions of the aforementioned banks in recent times have highlighted the urgency of examining the possibility of a new public banking model. Such a model is in place in 21 European countries and many more across the world. Germany's Sparkasse and New Zealand's Kiwibank are two examples which have proven to be hugely successful and popular. The Government has previously used an Indecon report from 2019 to say that the commercial banks were fulfilling this role. They are not doing so anymore or will not be very soon. The Government must engage with credit unions and post offices to explore the possibility of using the existing infrastructures for a public banking system.

Sinn Féin has also published a community wealth-building document. This model is in operation in parts of the UK and the US. Our proposal is about developing indigenous assets in such a way that wealth is added to our communities, not extracted from them. It makes financial power work for people and local towns by retaining as much of that wealth as we can through local supply chains and targeted procurement contracts.

When we talk about the future of banking in Ireland, we must remember that we are talking about the future with our communities front and centre. We must shake off the tired ways of the past that have brought this country to its knees. Those banking models have no commitment to the people of this country, only to shareholders who could not care less about Irish communities.

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