David Norris (Independent)

Speaking as a reasonably intelligent but unqualified observer of financial matters, there seems to be nothing new in either report. They confirm what any person with average intelligence could have said and rightly did say. They are not explosive in terms of their intellectual content, irrespective of the political reception with which they were met.

Reference, some charming, has been made to the staff of the Department of Finance. Sometime ago I asked in the House about the qualifications of departmental personnel because I had heard on a radio programme that only a small proportion had an advanced qualification in economics. I understood this to be the position, more or less. I do not intend my comments to be taken personally, but for many years I raised the point that the Department of Finance's forecasts were routinely off the mark. I wondered why and was concerned long before this crisis.

Today we again heard about the importance of the word "systemic". Time and again I stated in the House my concern in this regard. We seem to be propping up the system, yet a more radical examination of it is required, not only domestically but also internationally. We are witnessing the biggest, the most massive, transfer of money from the poor into the pockets of the rich that I have known in my time in politics. With the assistance of the corrupt banks and rating agencies, the State is behaving as a type of inverted Robin Hood, that is, stealing from the poor to satisfy the exorbitant appetites of the wealthy and people of considerable financial influence.

Will the Minister of State ask for an investigation into a matter I raised on the Adjournment some weeks ago when I was able to demonstrate incontrovertibly that there had been significant violations of liquidity regulations by one of the principal banks in the International Financial Services Centre? This went unremarked upon in the Irish media until it was taken up by Süddeutsche Zeitung, then by the Sunday Business Post and The Irish Times in a page-long article that, while not referring to the Seanad, relied heavily on the information I had brought to the attention of the House.

The Minister of State's speech was interesting in that it clearly was spin. There was virtually nothing in it, except for a watered down account of the two reports. That he referred to Government involvement only once was interesting. He stated: "While Ireland's banking crisis has been influenced by global events, it is clear that in various ways bank practices and governance failings, taken together with Government policies and weak financial supervision, seriously exacerbated Ireland's credit and property boom," etc. In only one sentence did he state the Government had been found to be complicit.

The Minister of State also said: "The Government fully endorses the conclusions of the preliminary reports prepared by the Governor of the Central Bank and Messrs Regling and Watson." Let us consider what Messrs Regling and Watson wrote. Page 5 of the executive summary reads: "Ireland's banking crisis bears the clear imprint of global influences, yet it was in crucial ways 'home-made'". The Government accepts the latter point. On the Order of Business, Senator Harris suggested the entire matter was an economic difficulty that Ireland encountered like a contagion. He suggested it was similar to isolating our analysis of fascism in the 1930s to only one country while ignoring the fact that other countries such as Italy, Spain and Germany were also involved in fascism. This was disingenuous in the light of what was stated in the report.

Regarding the conditions, we had a boom and unprecedented access to cross-border funding, that is, borrowing internationally at comparatively low interest rates. The banks should have been able to resist this temptation. Surely they should have known better than to do what they did, which was to borrow significantly in international markets and punt it on property speculation, while ignoring and trampling on their ordinary customers. Now that they have been broken by the casino, they revert to the ordinary citizens of Ireland and put their hands in their pockets.

The intrusion of foreign banks resulted in extra competition, but the banks did not examine where that was leading them. I have spoken about competition many times in the House. It is not the unrelieved benefit that some believe it to be. Here is another classic example of how competition was used against the interests of ordinary people. When we hit a snag, the market forces that were supposed to prevail were suspended in the interests of the big boys.

The same page of the report reads: "There was scope to mitigate the risks of a boom-bust cycle". It did not happen. Instead, "official policies and banking practices in some cases added fuel to the fire". This is a clear identification of Government policy as being largely to blame. The Government "should have done more to dampen the powerful monetary and liquidity impulses that were stimulating the economy". Instead, "the pattern of tax cuts left revenues increasingly fragile, since they were dependent on taxes driven by the property sector". Once again, we return to the issue of the property bubble. The report reads: "Ireland was also unusual in having tax deductibility for mortgages, and significant and distortive subsidies". This is not exactly stating there was a large international crisis and that we were somehow caught in the tempest. It states there were clear and detectable domestic problems that should have been indicated. The report uses the wonderful phrase, "This was a plain vanilla property bubble". Apparently, the Government was immune to the taste of plain vanilla bubbles and did not notice that what it was sucking was toxic.

I am delighted to see the rating agencies mentioned on page 16 of the report. As I have stated time and again, they are a collection of crooks — Standard & Poor's, Fitch and Moody. Fitch is a wonderful name. These were the people who helped to manufacture some of the toxic products and were paid for rating them. How is that for a lark? I wish we could all get away with this. It is a form of corruption, but what are we doing about it? I am glad that, two years after I raised the issue, it will be examined to determine whether something should be done. Why should ordinary people pay for this dubious practice?

The report cites one or two aspects as being good, for example, the creation of the National Pensions Reserve Fund. I agree. The report reads: "Errors of judgement in bank management and governance contributed centrally to Ireland's financial crisis". They most certainly did; therefore, let us examine a few of them.

I would like a few more minutes, if that is possible. No one else seems to be that interested.