John Whelan (Labour)

I want to put on the record something that must never be forgotten by the House or the country, that being, our banks have brought the country to the brink of ruination. They walked the last Government into a haymaker when they suckered it into the bailout and turned private debt into sovereign debt.

In the context of our debate on the fiscal treaty, I call on the Leader to tell the Minister for Finance that he must intervene with the banks. It has been proven beyond question that they are not open for business. The Irish Banking Federation, IBF, repeatedly claims that the banks want to fund small businesses, the self-employed and family businesses if they have good propositions, but there is a raft of anecdotal evidence to the contrary. No Senator is unaware of businesses that are being turned down daily. The banks have a new mechanism so that these rejections do not enter the official record. They talk a person down on the telephone or talk one out of applying in the first place, which means it does not show up as a refusal. In reality, they are misleading the Government. They must be taken to task. They privatised the gain and nationalised the pain, but there has been no quid pro quo for the taxpayer. There is not a single family in the country that is not paying the price for what occurred. Will the Leader arrange a debate with the Minister for Finance? I have irrefutable evidence of countless companies being refused finance. More small businesses will be driven to the wall and start-ups will be curbed. This is not just my opinion. I received evidence this morning. A small business issued a number of cheques during the weekend, one of which was bounced for the sake of 27 cent.

The Governor of the Central Bank, Professor Patrick Honohan, shares my opinion. This week, he confirmed that the lack of finance for the small business sector, as has been highlighted by the Irish Small and Medium Business Enterprises Association, ISME, and the Small Firms Association, SFA, for months, was actual. The Government must stand up to the banks and call the chief executives to task for not giving out the money we gave their banks for business loans.