Results 24,161-24,180 of 27,080 for speaker:Richard Boyd Barrett

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Banking Issues: Central Bank (20 Sep 2023)

Richard Boyd Barrett: Is Mr. Makhlouf saying that banks trying to outdo one another with reckless lending was not a contributory factor?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Banking Issues: Central Bank (20 Sep 2023)

Richard Boyd Barrett: We will agree to disagree on that.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Banking Issues: Central Bank (20 Sep 2023)

Richard Boyd Barrett: I think insane competition at every level in the banking sector contributed enormously to banks encouraging people to speculate, for example, on buy-to-let mortgages, including people who should never have got into that. That is one example. There are many others, but we will agree to disagree on that. I will ask about the Central Bank's warning to the Government about not taking...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Banking Issues: Central Bank (20 Sep 2023)

Richard Boyd Barrett: Mr. Madouros was in the middle of responding to a question.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Banking Issues: Central Bank (20 Sep 2023)

Richard Boyd Barrett: To follow on that from that, first of all it seems illogical to say that any component of that demand is the demand of ordinary, low- to middle income workers or earners, given that every bit of analysis shows that they have lost, and that demand has been depressed as a result of the cost-of-living and housing crises. It behoves us, and maybe the witnesses - I know they are not the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Banking Issues: Central Bank (20 Sep 2023)

Richard Boyd Barrett: One of the terrible features of the current situation in respect of interest rate hikes - whatever about the Central Bank’s macro objectives, as it were, to prevent overall inflation – is that a huge number of people with mortgages are struggling to keep a roof over their head or, even worse, have had their mortgages handed over to vulture funds. These vulture funds are...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Banking Issues: Central Bank (20 Sep 2023)

Richard Boyd Barrett: We will agree to disagree on that.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Banking Issues: Central Bank (20 Sep 2023)

Richard Boyd Barrett: Or else they cannot afford it.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Banking Issues: Central Bank (20 Sep 2023)

Richard Boyd Barrett: Or we could just take their licence off them if they do not agree to appear before democratically elected members?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Banking Issues: Central Bank (20 Sep 2023)

Richard Boyd Barrett: I have a very quick question. The Central Bank's quarterly report, which I always find a very useful document, contains something I have asked about, that is, the net household wealth figures, which I have a particular interest in. We all should have an interest in them. There was a good article on the evolution of the net household wealth. I think it was written by Paul somebody, a...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Banking Issues: Central Bank (20 Sep 2023)

Richard Boyd Barrett: The type of wealth, yes. It does that for the overall figure. The article states that for a particular year there is a certain amount of property wealth, business assets, deposits, other financial assets, and this much debt or whatever. It would be useful, however, to see that breakdown applied to-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Banking Issues: Central Bank (20 Sep 2023)

Richard Boyd Barrett: Exactly. It is relevant to some debates being had.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Banking Issues: Central Bank (20 Sep 2023)

Richard Boyd Barrett: It would be helpful. That information may be already in the hands of the people who wrote the article.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Banking Issues: Central Bank (20 Sep 2023)

Richard Boyd Barrett: Yes. Directly related to that, the article stated that it is now becoming easier to understand and scrutinise this information because of distributional wealth accounts. There were Central Bank and European Central Bank sources. I did not quite understand what distributional wealth accounts were, why that made it easier or where they get this information. Any further notes or information...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Banking Issues: Central Bank (20 Sep 2023)

Richard Boyd Barrett: It was all done in Conway's pub at the top of O'Connell Street, was it not?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Banking Issues: Central Bank (20 Sep 2023)

Richard Boyd Barrett: Coming from a different point of view on the last point, would it be fair to say that competition in the Irish banking sector has been a disaster and that all the reckless lending practices by banks that we saw when there were more people in the market helped to contribute to the last economic crash? Indeed, when we look outside the pillar banks - not that the pillar banks are saints, by any...

Mortgage Interest Relief: Motion (Resumed) [Private Members] (20 Sep 2023)

Richard Boyd Barrett: I thank Deputy Doherty and Sinn Féin for bringing forward this motion on mortgage interest hikes that are inflicting extraordinary hardship and suffering on tens and tens of thousands of homeowners and mortgage holders who are being crippled with these ten hikes over a short period of time. This has put many of them into a completely unsustainable situation about which the Government...

Ceisteanna ar Pholasaí nó ar Reachtaíocht - Questions on Policy or Legislation (21 Sep 2023)

Richard Boyd Barrett: I raise another egregious example of problems with school transport. Since the end of August, I have been in communication with parents and the association of parents with children who have disabilities and wheelchair users in Sandymount. They were informed a few days before the resumption of classes that instead of the 11 buses needed to get all the children to school, there are only...

Energy (Windfall Gains in the Energy Sector) (Cap on Market Revenues) Bill 2023: Second Stage (21 Sep 2023)

Richard Boyd Barrett: This Bill is better than nothing but it is too little and too late to address the cost-of-living misery and the energy poverty that has been inflicted on huge swathes of our population since the cost-of-living crisis took off. I believe it was People Before Profit that put the first cost-of-living motion to the Dáil at the outset of the crisis in October 2021, which looked for measures...

Affordable Housing: Motion (Resumed) [Private Members] (21 Sep 2023)

Richard Boyd Barrett: It is utterly shameful that 12,800 people, including 3,800 children, are in emergency accommodation. This is getting worse because of the Government's decision to lift the no-fault eviction ban. We urge the Government to urgently reinstate that ban. We will have a motion before the Dáil next Wednesday to seek the expediting of People Before Profit's Eviction Ban Bill 2022, which has...