David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. It is an indication of how serious the Government is taking this issue that the Minister for Finance would present himself to Seanad Éireann. I regret he was not able to be present, though I am sure it was for very good reasons, when Senators Barrett and Quinn spoke. What they said was so important, so precise, so clear and so brilliantly argued that it is very important the Minister should take the time to read the record of the Seanad, because what they said will be of infinitely greater value than anything I can say, as I am very much an amateur. Nonetheless, I am an amateur who has been concerned politically and socially for the welfare of the Irish people throughout my political career.

I remember a number of years ago, at the beginning of this financial crisis, predicting that mortgages would be a really serious problem, that we were only beginning to see the tip of the iceberg and that, as the situation worsened, more people would be dragged into this very difficult situation. I made a suggestion at that stage, which was probably a little naive, that we would create a department, not of homeland security, as it is in the United States, but a department of home security, so a group of officials could get together and study the kind of proposals Senator Barrett has used his academic training and encyclopaedic knowledge of the markets and regulations to present to us today.

It is a very important day for Seanad Éireann when such a constructive and immediate response to a very difficult situation should have been entered by Senator Barrett. I am glad the Minister is here but I hope Senator Barrett will send it also to Ms Fiona Muldoon and to the public interest directors of the banks. After all, we own them. I do not know what they are doing. I understand they got ¤2.5 billion and they have lent about ¤1 million of it. What is happening? It is very constipated banking, as far as I can see. Nothing very much seems to emerge. We hear day after day on the radio of situations where valid mortgages are turned down. The banks want to amass money in order to refloat their books. Very few people will disagree with this assessment.

The Bill gives certain things. It gives stability, which is very important. It is EU-complicit and has been validated by a number of very significant financial authorities. It provides a situation which could protect us against bubbles in the market. In addition, it has a strict loan to value ratio, which is very important and would allow a much lower possibility of default.

I wish to turn to some of the points made by other speakers. Senator D'Arcy is a very amiable and decent person and I hope he was not put in just to block this Bill. I hope Senator Barrett will do something that Seanad Éireann has done historically for the past few years, namely, when we feel there is something very valuable, the proposer, when he responds, sits down after three minutes instead of five, leaving two minutes remaining so that the Bill is still alive in some form on the Order Paper of Seanad Éireann. This is a terribly important and timely Bill.

Senator D'Arcy seemed to suggest one thing with which I profoundly disagree, namely, that the 100,000 or so people who were on the unemployment register before the bubble and the crisis were not really looking for work at all. One cannot say that about an entire group of people and I hope he did not mean it. God knows, I know it is easy to make a slip of the tongue but I hope that remark was an ill-considered one. I presume Senator D'Arcy's little excursion into the German psyche came from one of the words used by Senator Barrett, realkreditobligationer. It is actually a Danish model and I am not sure the Danes would be flattered by being accused of having a Germanic psyche.

I was very impressed indeed by the tribute paid to Senator Barrett by Senator Hayden, who is one of the best speakers and one of the most incisive intellects in this House. I do not always agree with her but, by God, you know what you are dealing with when you are dealing with her. She talked about the historical background we need to look at. However, that came out of the kind of historical background we are looking at, because the great fire in Denmark in the late 1790s created appalling chaos in the market and this was produced in response to it. Now, it is a valuable response in our situation.

The other point is that it was a mutual situation. It was not just the banks, it was also the building societies. I remember them in my day being mutual societies for the communal benefit and social welfare of people. Then, we got greedy. They decided to privatise themselves and everybody got ¤10,000, ¤15,000 or ¤20,000 - I think I got about ¤2,000 out of mine. I always felt this was a violation of what they were set up for, which takes us back to the principal of mutuality and social good. One need only look at the situation from which we have come.

I am not good at graphs but I refer to one which shows the composition of debt by country in 2010 as a percentage of GDP. We are the worst in every category. Senator Barrett has not given a percentage for household debt but it looks as though it is 120%.