Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator O'Brien. It is an expletive deleted book. It continues:

"No [expletive deleted] Protestant is coming near us. Those establishment [expletive deleted] and Bank of Ireland have been running our country before we came along, and those [expletive deleted] are not going to bring me down. None of them are ever going to look down on us again. We are the outsiders, and this is our moment. Those [expletive deleted] don't own us any more."

In a sense, what the Irish Independent found in the tapes Mr. Carswell and Mr. McWilliams found some time previously.

It is a sector which has done immense damage. We need to regulate it much more strictly. We need much higher capital requirements. The Minister has my support in that regard.

Amendment No. 1 inserts, "The Bank [that is, the Central Bank] shall publish in its Annual Report a statement of the reforms undertaken by bodies in respect of which reports of breaches were made." On Committee Stage, the Minister was concerned that we referred to what had happened to the individuals. The object that we had in mind was that if Mr. X made a complaint, where is he now? The Minister was concerned that complainants should have anonymity and we have rephrased that to put the emphasis on the reforms.

I mentioned on the previous occasion - it is mentioned in the briefing notes that the library service helpfully prepared for us - that the misgivings of Ms Estelle Feldman, who has studied this in Trinity College, Dublin, about breaches and whistleblowing are that the organisation never gets reformed and the whistleblower is punished. I am also concerned that in some banks this has been going on for decades. I refer to the ICI affair in the 1980s, the offshore deposits that were not offshore at all, secret pension funds for executives in the Caribbean, and then the gold medal one on 29 September.

We must be able to measure progress as we try to eliminate these malpractices from Irish banking. There have been a serious number of insurance collapses also. How does the Central Bank know if we are making any progress in these matters? Is it worthwhile reporting any breaches at all? Nothing happens, they continue on as before, they get bailed out and the taxpayer gets stung again.

We have rephrased the amendment in light of the Minister for Finance's concerns which, of course, we accept, in that we were not protecting anonymity. How do we know if this is having any effect at all? From listening to radio programmes, the furious wish of the Irish people is that the banking system should reform itself. Can we have a measure of progress?

As with all of these amendments, if they are of use to the Minister, we offer them in that spirit. If Deputy Brian Hayes finds that they are not, it will not cause any great annoyance. The public wants a new regime for regulating banks and these are suggestions from me and my colleagues on these Independent benches that could be off assistance. If they are worse than that and might obstruct the Minister in the reforms, obviously, we would not push them.

They are offered in the context of the anger since the release of the Anglo Irish Bank tapes about the conduct of banking in Ireland and the need for a stricter regulatory regime. Every day in the House, Senators on all sides express their conviction that we are not making progress and that Irish banking is unreformed. Banks do not treat people who fall into arrears well and they try to induce people to get away from their tracker mortgages. Paddy O'Gorman of RTE discussed in the last couple of days cheque cashing services coming within the general remit of financial services. Where one seeks to cash a cheque for €50, one receives €38 in cash. This happens where people cannot wait five days for the money. Why does it take five days for a bank to perform cash transmission in the era of electronics? No credit is available for businesses. This is about dealing with breaches, reforming the sector and looking for evidence that it has reformed. Deputy Hayes and the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, must deal with these issues on a daily basis. I am not so sure the corporate culture has changed. It must be sent a message from the Houses of the Oireachtas that we are opting for stricter regulation. In that spirit, I offer my proposal to the Minister of State. If it helps his hand, that would be good. If there is no positive impact on what he is trying to do, that is fine. We tried.