Results 4,501-4,520 of 7,975 for speaker:Joe Higgins

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Overview of Financial Sector: Discussion with Ulster Bank (4 Sep 2013)

Joe Higgins: Has the bank conducted an assessment of the amount of negative equity involved in this total?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Overview of Financial Sector: Discussion with Ulster Bank (4 Sep 2013)

Joe Higgins: I ask Mr. Brown to explain in a way that an ordinary householder could understand. In absolute figures, how much negative equity is involved in the property for which the bank has loaned money?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Overview of Financial Sector: Discussion with Ulster Bank (4 Sep 2013)

Joe Higgins: The bank has issued what I would describe as hard-line press statements with regard to the question of debt forgiveness. I have raised this issue with the other banks. Given the disaster inflicted on ordinary home owners - I am not referring to those who bought a string of properties for speculative purposes - and the young working people in their 20s and 30s who are now obliged to pay...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Overview of Financial Sector: Discussion with Ulster Bank (4 Sep 2013)

Joe Higgins: With respect, just about every ordinary home owner has experience on a monthly basis of the huge trauma of meeting the cost of staying in a home. A minority of the bank's customers are in arrears. We can be certain that among those who are not in arrears are people who are struggling to meet their payments, and other aspects of family life are suffering because of the prices gouged from...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Overview of Financial Sector: Discussion with Ulster Bank (4 Sep 2013)

Joe Higgins: That is the point I made to Mr. Brown but many of those who were caught in the bubble are making huge sacrifices. It is also a drain on the economy because funds that should be going into goods and services to create employment are being diverted to the financial system. Rather than the business as usual approach, does Mr. Brown not think the financial system as a whole should find a global...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Overview of Financial Sector: Discussion with Ulster Bank (4 Sep 2013)

Joe Higgins: I have one last question. Obviously, Mr. Brown will not agree. I do not expect, unfortunately, that the bankers and the European bondholders will become socialists overnight.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Overview of Financial Sector: Discussion with Ulster Bank (4 Sep 2013)

Joe Higgins: Anyway, that is the solution and we will come back to it. I am curious about a comment made by Mr. Brown in the Sunday Independent in August. He was asked by the newspaper if he believed it was time for the Government to row back on austerity. He stated:It's important the government continues with the programme they've agreed with the Troika. Clearly very good progress has been made.I...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Overview of Financial Sector: Discussion with Ulster Bank (4 Sep 2013)

Joe Higgins: I cannot find the exact date, but I saw that Ulster Bank is projected to return to profit within one or two years. Is that correct?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Overview of Financial Sector: Discussion with Ulster Bank (4 Sep 2013)

Joe Higgins: Ulster Bank has 5,800 employees at present. How many has the bank shed in the past 12 months and how many does it intend to shed in the next 12 months?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Overview of Financial Sector: Discussion with Ulster Bank (4 Sep 2013)

Joe Higgins: Does Mr. Brown recognise the huge contradiction here? Against the background of massive unemployment in the State and all the ravages of the economic crisis, Ulster Bank, which projects profits, is adding to the crisis by adding to the number of people on the dole. Why does the bank not take a different approach?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Overview of Financial Sector: Discussion with Ulster Bank (4 Sep 2013)

Joe Higgins: Will Ulster Bank make any special provision for its employees whose contracts are being ended and who have mortgages with the bank so that they do not lose their homes if they cannot find other jobs?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Overview of Financial Sector: Discussion with Ulster Bank (4 Sep 2013)

Joe Higgins: Many bank employees naturally got mortgages from their own banks. If they now no longer have a place in the bank, it creates a problem for them, particularly those of more recent vintage. Does Ulster Bank not need to look at that very sympathetically and in a special light?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Overview of Financial Sector: Discussion with Permanent TSB (5 Sep 2013)

Joe Higgins: What is the difference between that and a split mortgage.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Overview of Financial Sector: Discussion with Permanent TSB (5 Sep 2013)

Joe Higgins: There have been three days of proceedings in the committee with four major bankers. All we have been doing, to put it crudely, is poking at a lightly formed scab over a deep wound that continues to fester underneath. Arising from the banking system that Mr. Masding said he grew up with and which is the only one he knows is an utter disaster from the orgy of speculation and profiteering....

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Overview of Financial Sector: Discussion with Permanent TSB (5 Sep 2013)

Joe Higgins: I did not say anything about a viable and profitable bank. Has Mr. Masding discussed with the Minister for Finance or considered, as a State-owned entity, a global approach to this disaster?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Overview of Financial Sector: Discussion with Permanent TSB (5 Sep 2013)

Joe Higgins: Mr. Masding's certainty is that he will be at their graveside, with his hand out, to take whatever they have left in terms of debt.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Overview of 2014 Pre-Budget Submissions: Discussion (11 Sep 2013)

Joe Higgins: I have listened to statements from the three organisations for many years and read their submissions to the joint committee. Essentially, these organisations are all supporters of Government austerity policies. They are endorsing a further savaging in the upcoming budget of public services and cuts of another €2.6 billion. This puzzles me. A colleague organisation of Mr. Noonan's...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Overview of 2014 Pre-Budget Submissions: Discussion (11 Sep 2013)

Joe Higgins: That cannot be done by cutting their social welfare rates.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Overview of 2014 Pre-Budget Submissions: Discussion (11 Sep 2013)

Joe Higgins: It also speaks to the very low levels of wages which are paid by many enterprises. That is the reality. How can someone survive-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Overview of 2014 Pre-Budget Submissions: Discussion (11 Sep 2013)

Joe Higgins: Could Mr. Noonan survive on that minimum wage? Would he like to be obliged to live on it? Surviving on the minimum wage is virtually impossible and Mr. Noonan is aware of that fact.