Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I sincerely thank the Members of this House. I am so proud to be with them as we address these really serious problems. I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Perry, who has responsibility for small and medium-sized enterprises. The Bill attempts to right-size, as it were, the banking sector, which had got too big; remove hidden subsidy to the banks - I am sure the Minister of State will have many other ideas in this regard; protect taxpayers and jobs; and show the importance of the Seanad by restoring faith in Parliament and protecting the public interest, not just the banking interest.

I believe that national legislation is needed and I welcome the assurances the Minister of State, Deputy Brian Hayes, gave. I also welcome that he did not read into the record the last sentence of his prepared script, which stated that he opposed the Bill - in fact he said the exact opposite. We will abide by the oral tradition rather than the speech written for him. Following what Senator Hayden said and what the Minister of State, Deputy Brian Hayes, said, the Bill remains very much alive and I will curtail my response to ensure it remains on the Order Paper.

The Minister of State, Deputy Brian Hayes, said that the European directive specifies that the capital requirement is set to increase from 2% to 4.5%. We are proposing 10% and 15%. Nobel Prize winners believe it should be 30% to 60%. We cannot return to the debt-fuelled banking that caused the country so many problems. We took the models from the United Kingdom and United States. As Senator Colm Burke said, this is a matter for a national parliament. We cannot simply say this will be done in Brussels. There is nothing on the A, B or C list of proposed Government legislation to address this. The Seanad took the initiative and we are doing it here. Senator Colm Burke, as a former Member of the European Parliament, said there would be flaws in relying on Europe to save us the next time.

I do not believe the culture of Irish banking has changed. It still annoys as many Oireachtas Members as it ever did and it still owes us the best part of €90 billion. I do not believe the Basel III accord is sufficiently radical, a view shared in the United States and United Kingdom, which is why they prepared their own legislation.

The Minister of State said that whenever possible, we have led with our own legislation and will continue to do so where appropriate. I do not believe we have led with our own legislation. I certainly will help and I am delighted at the Minister of State's invitation that we prepare our own legislation.

Senator Sheahan referred to the concerns people have as to whether the problem has gone away. People want us as a Parliament to react and get risk out of it.

Let them take as many risks as they want with their own money. That is the purpose of the Brown-Vitter Bill to which reference was made and it is definitely where the emphasis is being placed in the United States and the United Kingdom. Let us not sleepwalk into any belief that the European Union will do the job for us.

I thank Senator Byrne for his encouragement, as always. I acknowledge the final sentence which the Senator read into the record but which was not actually uttered in the Parliament. I also thank Senator Hayden for her contribution. I thank the Acting Chairman for seconding the Bill. It is most important that we, on behalf of the citizens of this country, get a grip on the banking sector. This Bill is an initiative, designed on an all-party basis, to do precisely that.