Sean Barrett (Independent)

I welcome the Minister to the House. This morning the people who used to say "Ulster says "No"" were here and we got on very well with them. They have been replaced by "Ulster Bank says "No"" with equal damage to the wider economy.

The section of the Minister's speech dealing with the banking problem was tentative but I take it as a reflection on the banks and not on himself. The Minister stated it is now hoped that following intensive engagement with the Central Bank, lenders will be in a position to move to providing suitable long-term forbearance options. He also stated the Bill should be a stimulus for the banks to develop and bring forward realistic and sustainable options. The Minister also stated lenders have provided details to the Central Bank which it is understood are broadly in line with the recommendations and they hope to reach the roll-out stage shortly.

We must be stronger with the banks. They have been at this for four years and have done untold damage to the country. The Minister will have the support of everybody in the House in this regard. The costs are huge, not least in the Minister's constituency. A report this week from the Central Statistics Office shows Limerick city has 18 unemployment blackspots and an average unemployment rate of 42.9%. A total of 18 of the 38 electoral districts in Limerick city were unemployment blackspots. The city also accounted for seven out of the ten electoral districts with the highest unemployment rates in the State. At individual level, St. John's A had 56.8% unemployment and Galvone B had 55.2% unemployment. This is a problem which has done untold damage to the country and which the Minister has faced during his 14 months in office.

When I studied economics, people such as James Meenan, Louden Ryan and Paddy Lynch, who were economists of the highest calibre, were on the boards of banks. They seem to have been eased out. The Irish Banking Review was shut down, which was a forum for economists and banks and had an international rating in the Journal of Economic Literature. The banks went off with madcap policies which have done so much damage to the country. We are still waiting for them to be called to account.

I support what the Minister stated last week, which he also mentioned in his speech, on the need to break the link between bank debt and sovereign debt. We need to get this quantified and to have certainty. We got into rescuing banks on the basis it was one of the cheapest bank rescues ever but the bill has kept increasing. Already, what exactly was agreed last week is in some doubt. The Sunday Times mentioned €32 billion and yesterday the Irish Independent mentioned €21 billion. An academic study from the University of Limerick states the banks have cost us €279.3 billion and they dominate the national debt much more than what we have borrowed ourselves. We must know the extent of this, otherwise the agreement reached at the summit, as has happened frequently, will unravel. I see today the Finns and the Dutch have doubts about what they agreed.

Europe needs a council of economic advisers analogous to the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council so the issues are not presented in simplistic terms such as that it was a bad night for Ms Merkel. The problem of a badly designed currency, as the euro undoubtedly was, being solved with all its design faults is not a matter of whether Ms Merkel was defeated or whether people were watching a soccer match at the time. We have a serious problem. What is the extent of the debts we want to transfer through Europe from the Exchequer to the banking system and what is the amount they are willing to accept? What is the level of agreement that exists for this to be accomplished? If we corrected the banking situation it would make a huge difference to how the country operates.

One of the figures mentioned as the cost for rescuing the banks to date is €64 billion and this would save approximately €32,000 per each of the 2 million taxpayers, which would be a huge benefit to the country were it to happen. I appeal for more precision from these meetings, and perhaps not doing business at 4 a.m. Europe needs a solution to a problem which can be seen not least in the Minister's constituency, where he has much more direct experience than I do with electoral districts where more than half the people are unemployed. I wish the Minister success in dealing with our banks and he will have the support of everybody in the House, and in dealing with rectifying how Europe can remedy the design faults in the euro from the beginning. The experiment has certainly given us four terrible years of recession.

During the week Mr. Jim Flaherty, the Canadian Minister for Finance, was presented with an honorary degree from NUI Galway. I have some Canadian guests in the Gallery. It is a country which has run its banking regulation in a manner we could seek to emulate. I hope he pays the Minister a courtesy call during the week because there are countries which regulated banks much better than we did and perhaps we have much to learn from them.