Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

While I do not think that changing the name of the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement will help, if more staff are employed, properly trained in the role they are supposed to carry out, I believe that will help. We all know what the banks did, including Anglo Irish Bank. I know fellows who cried, grown men, and the fellows in charge of it got away. We all know what Bank of Ireland and AIB did going back to when they advised their customers to put their money into overseas accounts. I know one man who never did a day's good after that. It should have been easy enough for someone to follow the pattern. It was not that men from the wilds of Blackwater, Sneem or, indeed, Kilgarvan, all had the idea to do the same thing; they got the advice to do that and they all suffered. They paid high penalties and their names were in the newspaper and the bank got away with it because they gave the names. Anglo Irish Bank got away with it. Bank of Ireland was no angel either. It is closing its outlets in different towns in Kerry and we do not applaud that.

The Government has a percentage stake in both banks. It should use it to ensure that a service is given to the people and especially the people in rural Ireland. Farms are being sold by vulture funds without farmers knowing. I contend that the vulture funds are all wrong. The customer had a deal with the bank, not the vulture funds, or they were never made aware that these vulture funds would come along with henchmen and sticks, who wore masks to hide who they were, threatening them to get out of their houses and off their land. These vulture funds have no right, even though they purchased something from a bank or finance company at a cheap price. There should be a follow-up there to see what is going on. These funds do not operate according to the deal done between the person who might have bought their house and ran into health problems or maybe the person who was trying to improve his lot as a farmer, buying a piece of land to try to increase his income to try to stay on the land. They did a deal with a financial company in Ireland, usually, Bank of Ireland, AIB or whoever, and the accounts were sold to the vulture funds. They should be followed up.

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