David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move:

That Seanad Éireann strongly condemns the Bank of Ireland for its arbitrary and undemocratic decision to close the accounts of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign and requests that they immediately reverse this decision.

This motion is about a move by the Israeli Government to close the bank resources of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, IPSC. I was contacted by it to let me know its bank accounts had been arbitrarily closed down by Bank of Ireland. I received the message on 4 October, which stated the IPSC had its accounts closed the previous week by Bank of Ireland without any proper explanation. It looks as if this move was as a result of pressure from the Israeli Government to interfere in the domestic affairs of an independent friendly country. I then wrote to Mr. Boucher, the head of Bank of Ireland, to tell him I was contacted by the IPSC because it is bank account with Bank of Ireland was closed. According to the IPSC no explanation was given and a request for an extension until December 2016 to allow it to transfer to another banking institution was denied. As far as I know, none of these bank accounts were ever used illegally in any way. This is a peaceful democratic movement and the attempt to interfere with it and hamper its operations is a clear attack on free speech.

The reply I received from Mr. Richie Boucher was that Bank of Ireland is a diversified financial services group which adheres to all applicable legislative and regulatory requirements in all countries in which it operates. He included a long list of all of the requirements. He then stated that as a matter of course the group is obliged to monitor and keep under active review all the national and international regulatory and legislative requirements. This is just reciting and parroting out lot of rubbish about statutory requirements. Nowhere in his letter does Mr. Richie Boucher allege the IPSC has breached a single one of these regulations, nor does he state it was involved in any suspicious activity.