Mary White (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It took a woman, Ms Fiona Muldoon, in the lions' den of the bankers' conference yesterday to spell out to the bankers how incompetent they are in dealing with the crisis in mortgage lending. She also drew an analogy between the treatment by the banks of their customers who are small and medium sized business owners and those who have mortgage difficulties, pointing out that the treatment of both was identical. She noted the Central Bank found there was a lack of experience in Irish banking:

Clearly, we were in uncharted territory and we found that the banks' teams were generally too small and insufficiently resourced with the appropriately experienced people. We pushed on this with all the major institutions: asking for an increased skill set, a bigger shop, a better operational platform and earlier intervention on "pre-arrears". Old-fashioned credit collection techniques were largely absent.

Yesterday, at the same conference, Mr. John Moran, the new supremo in the Department of Finance, was critical of the banks along the same lines. This week is Enterprise Week for small and medium enterprises. Mr. Moran stated that banks have to get their act together because small and medium enterprises are needed in this country to curb the scourge of unemployment. In time, we are going to be looking back at this. The banks failed us, the regulators failed us. The banks are again failing to deal with the issues in the economy. Increasingly, I wonder if we in this country are able to solve our problems in any way. As Ms Muldoon observed, why do we not solve each problem and each mortgage in a business way, one by one, in an American way? The failure of our banks means they are the cause of the economic crisis we are in - there is absolutely no doubt about that. What is the Minister for Finance going to do about this?