Terry Leyden (Fianna Fail)

It is in my declaration of interests, if the Senator wants to look.

I congratulate the Minister for Finance and the Government for taking bold and decisive action on 30 September. This move, while initially greeted with some concern, has since been emulated by countries around the world in one form or another. We gave the lead. While it would have been preferable to act in concert with our European Union counterparts, given the lack of a structure for so doing and in the face of serious concerns, we took the initiative and benefited from this foresight. The initial commitment has now been followed up with a scheme which incorporates many of the constructive suggestions made by Members of this and the other House in the past two weeks.

I will outline the clear necessity for the scheme before making a few reasonable suggestions for improving the transparency and accountability of it. The Government acted to protect the entire Irish economy. The collapse of a major bank would be catastrophic for our economy and would never have been allowed to happen by this Government. The early and decisive action by the Minister meant that the economy benefited from the stability and certainty provided by a clear guarantee that the Government would act, if necessary, to prevent the collapse of a major Irish bank. Had an Irish bank collapsed, the Government would have had to have intervened in any case and it benefited the entire economy to give such a commitment in clear terms in advance and before any potential problems materialised.

An estimated 60,000 people are employed by the financial institutions in Ireland. The two major retail banks, AIB and Bank of Ireland, employ approximately 30,000 staff between them. The collapse of one of these banks would not only have been catastrophic for the economy but would have resulted in devastating job losses. Putting the best face on it, there would have been a situation where some parts of the collapsed bank would have been taken over by another institution and perhaps some staff along with it. On the other hand, some collapses could result in further collateral damage in the form of job losses at the contracted suppliers of goods and services to the collapsing institution. The fact that this number of jobs are potentially at risk is, in itself, a compelling reason to act to secure the financial institutions.

As a nominee of the Irish Bank Officials Association in the Seanad, I am acutely aware of the contribution made by bank employees to the success of this sector which, despite the fall in share prices, still attracts huge foreign investment. AIB shares are €2.99 today from a high of €17.41, Bank of Ireland shares are €1.76 from a high of €12.81 in the good times and Anglo Irish Bank shares are €2.12 from a high of €13.02. That shows the difficulties that have arisen but they still attract huge foreign investment. It would be grossly unfair if ordinary bank employees, who have warned about the dangers inherent in departing from traditional banking practices by senior executives in recent times, were now to pay the price for these executives' recklessness.

Addressing the detail of the scheme, I welcome that it requires participating institutions to appoint a nominee of the Minister to the board of management. As Senator Ross pointed out, more information is required about the candidates the Minister proposes to appoint to this panel of supervisors. I have a reasonable proposal that steps are taken, either by amending the scheme or in general banking legislation, to require banks to appoint representatives of ordinary bank employees to the boards of the major institutions. There should be worker participation on the boards of all these organisations. I am very surprised that is not the case. We need to introduce legislation and I would appreciate if the Minister provided for this.

Worker directors should be appointed to the boards of banks. That is a reasonable point of view. It would be worthwhile and would give staff security. As well as the other nominees provided for in the scheme, this would be an additional appointment, or appointments, to these institutions. ESB, CIE, Iarnród Éireann and RTE all have worker directors on their boards. Why do the banks not have them? One of the reasons the banks got into trouble was that they did not listen to the ordinary, hardworking and decent bank officials who have diligently worked on their behalf but who have not been empowered by being on the board of these banks.

I very much welcome that the scheme empowers the Minister to appoint persons to observe the remuneration, audit, credit and risk committees of the institutions involved. I would like the Minister to give further details on this clause as the supervision of risk management is crucial to securing value for money for the taxpayer.

On the selection of the candidates, I suggest the Minister advertises in next Sunday's newspapers for suitable persons to apply. Let there be an open and transparent approach. I do not want to see another golden circle of people being appointed. Many people could be appointed by the Government and I suggest an open and transparent approach whereby applicants could apply within the next seven days to be considered as suitable appointees.

Very few people are neutral in this regard and the Minister will have difficulty getting people who are qualified but who do not have shares in banks or who are not involved in banks in some way or another. This would be a way to identify very fine people who are prepared to give their time and services to the Minister, the Government and the banks. This is a useful suggestion and I ask the Minister to consider this approach. If he does not advertise it, he could put it on his website that he is open to considering all names.