Marc MacSharry (Fianna Fail)

This might be a long-winded question given that I am not as familiar with this process as other Senators and have not participated in questioning Ministers on this issue. I welcome the Minister to the House. There is nobody from any party who does not have enormous respect for him. Everybody wholeheartedly supports him in what he is trying to do. It is how he does it that divides us politically and it is on that we may debate.

At what point will what Senator Barrett describes as the "back stairs" for the bankers in the Department of Finance close to them and be opened to the people? Increasingly, that is hoped, as stated in the Minister's text and highlighted by Senator Barrett. A strong onus is being put on the banks to do the right thing. As I stated on the Order of Business today, I welcome the publication of the legislation but regret the missed opportunities. It is like legislating to tell the kidnappers it is now the law to release their hostages - if it suits them In my view, that does not put the people at the front and in the centre. Will it be possible to have an independent authority, as opposed to the banks which are the larger proportion of any 65% of the creditors, to take control of this process so that the people can believe that, at minimum, they will have a fair crack of the whip? Those same people gave the banks a more than fair crack of the whip when they needed our support.

My second question relates to a European context. I am sure the Minister does not need encouragement from the likes of me but, at the same time I encourage him to do all he can to ensure that issues such as sovereign write-down are not thought to be crazy simply because they are portrayed by some aspects of German media in that way. He should remind those concerned that in the London agreement in the 1950s the entirety of lenders to Germany and those owed money by that country wrote down its sovereign debt by 50% and effectively wiped the level of interest rates Germany was being obliged to pay. Looking at the conditions of the London agreement, one finds the Germans broke them as recently as 1990 but they had a write-down of their debts at that time. This could greatly assist the case by case consideration of banks and the State in allowing banks to write off for individuals in difficulty. At what point are we going to put the people in command, rather than the banks? In my view, this legislation fails miserably in that regard.