Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

In 2009, I wrote an article about the banks entitled "A person of no consequence" for The Irish Times. I am telling Members about it today because the article is more relevant than ever at this time. I believe we are people of no consequence as the tapes of the conversations among bankers have comprehensively revealed. We know now, with a certain outstanding evidence, that the Anglo Irish Bank financial swindle, the reckless national deceit, the appearance and reality sham, and the collar and tie financial disloyalty is that of an Anglo Irish Bank kind of financial subversion. I am not surprised, and how could I be, because all of the banks, Anglo Irish Bank, Allied Irish Banks, Bank of Ireland, Irish Life and Permanent and Irish Nationwide Building Society rank first and top of a hooligan pile. None is exempt. They have been paid for operating publicly and yet in the shadows, and, especially when it was done over recent years, fraudulently, abusively, recklessly, without proper governance, without internal or external regulations and without profit limitation. For me, as a Senator in this country in 2013, it ranks as the greatest, the most revolting, the most offensive and probably the most immoral travesty of our time, because it is financial power perverted.

If I were to ask the question, "Who runs the country?", the answer is the banks. The banks run the country. Everyone else is either a boy, a monkey or a person of no consequence. Unless this seat of power, the Seanad, and the seat of power, the Lower House of the Dáil does something about it, as Senator Crown has suggested, we will remain, as we have done for the past five years, people of no consequence. Will the House bring the Minister for Finance into the Seanad in order that we can ask him what he will do about out this matter?