Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent)

Have certain executives fooled Mr. Elderfield as they fooled his predecessors in the past? How are some of these individuals still in place? The State has given €3.7 billion to Bank of Ireland, for example, while a Canadian investor has put €1.1 billion into that bank. However, the latter's share of the business, at one third, is larger than the State's shareholding of 12%. On what basis did the boards of the banks give some of these executives a clean bill of health?

There is a question for all of us to consider in terms of what has fuelled our passivity on this issue. Is it fear of debt or of executives, systems or directors? Every day we watch the continuing incompetence, arrogance and greed of the banks and do nothing, even though their doors are open only because of our money. I am utterly tired of hearing about what the banks are not capable of doing. They are now at the stage of rejecting the Minister's theory of solvency, or making it difficult to bring it about. It seems they are trying to counteract what the Minister is seeking to do. It begs the question as to whether people would be better off, as they were in north Mayo in my father's time, putting their money in biscuit tins? I do not say this in a flippant or humorous way. One might ultimately be grateful for having done that because there is some degree of security in it. One is also obliged to wonder whether, as John Waters has mused, the fact that alcohol is so cheap in this country is the reason we have not had riots in the streets.