David Norris (Independent)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Mansergh, but it is a qualified welcome. I do not mean any disparagement to his talents because I have known him as a very senior and capable public servant, a distinguished Member of this House, and a very capable Minister who understands clearly these matters, but for such a serious debate it would have been welcome if the Minister for Finance himself had turned up.

It would also have been helpful if we had had immediate delivery of the Minister of State's speech. I had to ask for it. I also had to ask for a copy of the blue book, the supplementary budget. It was not delivered to Members of this House, as was traditionally the case. Neither was it given to Members of the other House until after the press got hold of it. I would like to think the Civil Service in this country was treating the Parliament with the respect with which it is due. I will continue to call for that.

At the outset the Government should acknowledge bad stewardship. I do not say that in a vindictive way. The Minister of State knows perfectly well that I have supported the Government when I thought it was doing appropriate things but there has been bad stewardship. We could spend the whole day giving a recital of it. I refer to PPARS, the overpayments to road builders, which was raised consistently by people such as me in the House, and waste in the health service. I previously mentioned a case where I lobbied with a parent to get delivery of a medical service for a particular syndrome. Three managers were appointed at the first stage but when the embargo on recruitment was introduced there was no delivery. That is wasteful. Those people are still in place and that kind of flab has to be cut out, however painful it is.

Let us consider the banks. The Minister of State spoke about our reputation. That is important but it is being squandered by these people who showed themselves to be nothing but beggars on horseback. What we have seen is gombeenery run riot. They alienated their own clients, the small people who pay taxes and who provided the funds. They deliberately moved managers around so that they would not know what was a good risk. They did not know how to rate people. They broke the contract between the ordinary people of this country and the banking institutions and for that reason I will have certain recommendations to make.

Scandal after scandal has been uncovered. Banks have taken money from people, stolen money from people's accounts and overcharged. For the purpose of foreign investment, banks involved themselves in the United States of America and that involvement collapsed through the fraud of their own officials. They provided packages so that people could have offshore accounts. Is it any wonder our reputation is in tatters?

We have a good capacity in this country and it is the same with our natural resources. Let us look at our agricultural industry to which Senator MacSharry on the Government side referred. We have wonderful beef and our reputation is in tatters because of the way the beef industry operated. Again, it repackaged rotten goods and destroyed credibility. We need to clean this gombeenery out of this country, however painful it is.

How dare people like Standard and Poor's and the rest of the international rating agencies downgrade this country. They should be held to account for their complicity in this mess that originated with the sub-prime collapse in the United States of America. This is an opportunity to do that by international agreement and for us to examine internationally the operations of multinationals that are now more powerful than governments. I would especially like to see Monsanto and Shell put in their boxes. Seriously damaging actions were taken to the detriment of our reputation.

I have made some proposals in this House. It is at least three months since I proposed the creation of a national property management agency. I am pleased to see some elements of that have been taken up under the national asset management agency, but it is not enough. We need a national property management agency into which all this property should be transferred. There is no constitutional impediment to this whatsoever. I know the rights of the owners of private property are guaranteed but the governing clause of the Constitution refers to the social good, the good of the people. I could quote it if necessary. I would love to see a property developer, speculator or bank go to the Supreme Court and argue that his or its private speculative interests were of more significance under the law and Constitution than the welfare of the people.

By way of a little coda, I must state I have never been a republican, unlike the Minister. I have never really acknowledged anything other than a cosmetic argument for a 32-county republic but it is now made and that is what we must move towards. One of the factors inhibiting us is the separation of the two parts of our island. We are inhibited in terms of certain tax structures but we should be fighting together. I am sorry to say the British have let us down by devaluing their own currency and selfishly not joining the eurozone. It would be much better if Newry and Dundalk were in the same regime. I say this against my deepest cultural persuasions.

We need positive ideas and they need to be listened to. We do not need all these Robespierres and Mesdames Defarges around this House calling every week for somebody else's head or a bucket of blood in respect of some personality-based issue. We need a couple of really good ideas and this is the time to implement them.

I did not believe I would see an asset management agency in my lifetime and I welcome the one to be established. Crony capitalism was referred to and that is exactly what we have. In addition to establishing the national asset management agency or property management agency, the banks should be nationalised. They should be drawn together into one great bank of Ireland that can have its reputation restored, whatever the cost. I do not want to see any property speculator making anything back out of this. So what if they lose their houses; I have no pity for them. So what if they go on social welfare. They made other people lose their houses and require social welfare. Let them taste what they themselves have delivered to the people.

A very serious problem confronts us. We will have a higher national debt, higher inflation, higher interest rates, higher unemployment and higher oil prices. We must stop doing what is good for Dublin 4 in the belief that it is good for the entire country. What is good for the country will be good for Dublin 4 as well. What we need to do is reduce Government spending and raise taxes fairly. Not all the budgetary provisions are fair. We need to stimulate the economy and protect and create jobs.

With regard to fair taxes and efficiencies, I call for the establishment of a new Ministry. In the United States there is a Department of Homeland Security. I want a Minister for home security to protect ordinary people's mortgages and ensure they at least have a roof over their heads. I want an audit to be conducted within every single Ministry and the results forwarded to the Committee of Public Accounts for examination. There is flab around the place. There are 58 different accounting systems in the Health Service Executive alone. What is that about? Let us cut it all out.

We are again requiring the Central Bank to engage in financial regulation. We are going round in circles because this is where we started. We found the system we had to be unsatisfactory and then established the Financial Regulator, which apparently was unsatisfactory because the regulations were not imposed and the authorities did not engage in supervision.

Why not introduce legislation to outlaw non-recourse provisions in loan agreements? If a property developer has three developments in construction and defaults on one loan, the banks are prevented from going after him in respect of the other two. Why? They should all be part of the same bundle.

Why did I have to ask the Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Deputy Hanafin, six months ago the position on claiming a social welfare benefit? I have become aware that there were people from outside this country getting friends to go into the social welfare offices to collect their money for them. When I asked the Minister whether they were being asked to produce identification, she did not know. I now know they were not. At least it is now known but it is ridiculous that it took me to point it out in this House. If I want to connect a telephone, I am asked to produce my passport, birth certificate and bank statements, yet we are handing out money as I have described.

Why not stop the extra child care supplement this September and then start the free year immediately? There is no joined-up thinking. Why is there a gap? Why are we only changing tax rates at the end of the year? We have the technology and talent to address this. There will be an eight-month gap before the measures are implemented. We are in a crisis but not behaving as if we were.

Betting does not do very much for this country. Why not double betting tax? Why not have a proper tax on travel abroad?

Owing to the time restrictions necessary to allow us all to contribute, I did not have the opportunity to make the kind of plea I usually make on behalf of the people who have lobbied me. I will leave this for the Finance Bill. However, I must say one of the meanest measures was the cut to the scheme for community support for older people, which is responsible for meals on wheels, electricity, etc. This is disgraceful and the scheme should be restored. The cut will only save a piddling amount of money. I will have more to say about fairness when discussing the Finance Bill.

My heart goes out to the Minister for Finance. He looked shattered, over-worked and exhausted in the Dáil. We must all support the Government but it must do the right and radical thing and ensure these skunks do not get away with it any more. I will support the Government in every measure it implements in this regard, including the nationalisation of the banks.