David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have taken up the Leader's suggestion from yesterday and I have written to both the chairman of the public services oversight committee and the broadcasting committee asking them to examine the completely unjustified and profligate payment of €85,000 to people who were not libelled and against whom RTE should have made a case for justification. I am very much prepared to supply further information to the committees in that regard. I will say no more about the issue at this stage but it is extraordinarily important for this piece of lunacy to be put back in its box.

Later this evening the Independent Members' time will see a debate about reform of the Seanad and so on. It strikes me that although people have raised the issue of us not meeting on Thursdays and so on, Senator O'Brien mentioned the number of Bills that are to be heard. There are 36 Bills on the Order Paper so why are we not dealing with them?

Could we please have a debate on the banking system and banks, and particularly the relationship with customers? They do not want ordinary people polluting their nice, clean banks. They were very happy to pick our pockets when they were caught gambling with money that was not theirs and we all had to cough up and pay for them. They are now behaving in a cavalier fashion by dispensing with cheque books and directing people to machines. I have accounts in two branches in the centre of Dublin, one of which has been open for nearly 70 years. In one branch there are seven machines and two human beings. Last Friday at No. 2 College Green, the old Parliament house, the queues went right through the entire banking hall into the vestibule and into the colonnade. There were three queues, and it was the same in a branch of AIB across the road. That is absolutely intolerable. On another day last week I tried to cash two cheques. I tried to cash a small cheque from the prize bonds and although I brought along my passport, the staff in the post office would not cash it. It had to be lodged to an account. No bank will cash the cheque; when it is lodged, the banks will sit on it for three or four days so they can get the interest. That is theft by banks from private individuals.