Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Today, the chief executive of AIB has acknowledged the role played by taxpayers in the bailout of his bank. The sheer scale of the taxpayer bailout of €20 billion should warrant a more transparent approach to any potential sale of this State-owned bank. Any plan to sell part of this public asset should be clear in its reasoning. The plan to sell up to 25% of the shares has been announced with the Minister, Deputy Noonan, providing little or no rationale. This is a profitable bank from which the State received €250 million in dividends last year.

There is no reason AIB should not be kept as a State bank to invest in our economy and to operate in competition with the private banking sector. The only reasoning offered so far is that state banks are not successful. This is not true. There is no basis for this whatever. Some of the best performing banks in Europe, such as those in Germany, are state banks. Every bank in this State that collapsed was a private bank. In one of his final acts as Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan is not being honest with taxpayers. These are the people who bailed out AIB and ultimately own 99.9% in shares. It is no surprise that AIB was far more receptive to public pressure on issues such as the standard variable rates and the sales to vulture funds. With any proposed sale, we will lose accountability. Even when it was State owned, they had to be brought kicking and screaming before the finance committee to examine the variable rates. That process is ongoing. When it is privatised we will have no accountability whatsoever. There needs to be a full debate and clarity provided on this and I would welcome Deputy Noonan coming into this House to explain why he wants to sell it now and why he is not negotiating the fiscal rules in order to allow us to spend any dividends from AIB in capital funding. We need explanations because it is the people who suffered most, the SMEs, the mortgage holders and the rural branch users who will now be at the mercy of unaccountable private investors. This is a huge price to pay in order to cobble together a legacy for the Minister, Deputy Noonan. It is a bad deal. We are not in September 2008 where my colleagues here to my left had to huddle into a room.