Grace O'Sullivan (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I wish everybody a very happy 2017 and I hope we have a good year.

Like other Members, I welcome the Government's announcement of the action plan for rural development. Those who will be affected by the plan have been consulted widely. The plan promoted cross-departmental co-operation and has some solid proposals to make it easier for people to continue living and raising families in Irish towns, villages and rural areas. I was particularly interested to see measures oriented towards revitalising the main streets of our rural towns and villages, something the Green Party is particularly keen to encourage.

However, there was one aspect of the realisation of the scheme that as a Green Party member and a proponent of local banking models I did not welcome. As part of the programme for Government, the Fine Gael Party committed to creating the legal structures necessary to permit a local banking model to emerge in Ireland. Such a model could emulate the best aspects of the German Sparkassenmodel and the New Zealand's Kiwi bank model, allowing focused regional banking orientated towards investment and loans within communities and avoiding many of the pitfalls and inefficiencies of scale that conventional banking models can produce. With this in mind, representatives of the German Sparkassenmodel had offered their services and advice to the Government in the establishment of such a system here in Ireland. lf one looks at action point No. 23 in the enhancing local services section of the plan, it commits to investigating the potential of the German Sparkassenmodel and the Kiwi model for the development of local public banks that operate in defined regions. This is a very welcome action point for any supporter of a more decentralised banking model, yet the delegated bodies for its development are the Department of Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, the Department of Finance, An Post and the Irish League of Credit Unions. No mention is made of Sparkasse Bank as a partner, delegating the task rather to our own very fine institutions of An Post the ILCU. How are they, as representatives of the existing savings systems, meant to be the best people in promoting its alternative? I would like to ask the Minister of State, Deputy Ring as the Minister of State with responsibility for regional economic development to reconsider the action point on No. 23 and to open this process up to the consultation and advice, freely offered by the representatives of the Sparkassenmodel?They should be fully included in this process, as should other examples of best practice in regional and local banking models.