Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Leader for facilitating my request to have the Minister come to the House and thank the Minister for taking the time to do so. I appreciate it. The big question is where lies An Post, the country's national treasure? Does it envisage becoming a full service bank like Kiwibank in New Zealand or the Sparkassen in Germany or does it plan further co-operation with the pillar banks? That is my main question this afternoon.

An internal memorandum from the retail marketing manager of An Post - I will not name the person who wrote it because she needs to go to language and linguistics classes - states that from 24 May, An Post will kick off a campaign to promote banking services at the post office and that the recipients of the memorandum will find enclosed a show card for display in their post offices. The memorandum states that this formed part of a larger focus to promote banking services at the post office to help bring new customers to the post office. An Post is "kicking off" - that is the level of communication. A banking service, involving AIB, Ulster Bank and Danske Bank, is what is kicking off in the post office. We are handing the post office network over to AIB, Ulster Bank and Danske Bank and closing 390 post offices at the same time. Let me remind the House about AIB. According to Mr. Bernard Byrne, the chief executive of AIB, management is creating a customer-centric, sustainable bank with a sustainable margin that will, in time, see it fully repay the State's €21 billion. He is referring to a capital injection of €21,000 million over a five to ten-year timeframe. That is great. These billions were lent to AIB in 2008 by me, you, all the other Senators and taxpayers. AIB, which is to become part of An Post, is already ten years in arrears with another eight to go, or 18 years in total. It is one law for the banks and another law for me. Given that AIB is 99% owned by the State, this defies logic. The State wants the bank to be customer-centric in post offices and make bellboys of the post offices with a harp over the door. That is my opinion.

The chief executive of AIB has a salary of €500,000 and two former AIB executives have been handed prison sentences. So far, we have only got back €10 billion of the €21 billion we pumped into the bank. In 2012, AIB cut 2,500 jobs and its soured loans peaked at €29 billion in 2013. In 2014, the bank came looking for bonuses, while in 2016, it fared among the worst in European Union banking stress tests. In the same year, it emerged that 3,000 customers had been wrongly denied a tracker mortgage rate over the previous decade.In 2017, AIB paid the State €280 million of the €20 billion it owes us. AIB remains the lender most likely to sue its customers in the High Court. AIB applied for debt summary judgments, where the bank seeks an immediate court ruling against a borrower without a trial and gaining recourse to any and all of the borrowers assets, on 755 occasions according to the 2017 court records. It is now at the counters in An Post. That is great.

Here are some facts about Ulster Bank. It is repaying €15 billion to its parent company, Royal Bank of Scotland, and we know about Royal Bank of Scotland and the fines it has had to pay. This is owed to the British and Irish taxpayers, where we put the money in North and South of the Border. We never learned what the split was, but the Republic is thought to have been responsible for two thirds of the billions. It now stands as a loan entity. The chief executive officer left and he now works for Paddy Power. That is great.

Ten years ago this month, our national debt was €39 billion; today, it is €200 billion. These are the banks that the Government wants An Post to deal with. It wants An Post to publicly subsidise our commercial banks. Are the commercial banks the real force pushing the flawed three-year deals at An Post, capturing a national asset for failed banks in order that they can overprice and profit? A similar deal was done in the UK with Bank of Ireland, and Bank of Ireland takes huge profits from the post office network there. It will cost UK taxpayers £2 billion to get rid of the bank. They cannot get rid of it even though they want to do so because it takes all the profits.

I appreciate everything the Minister has done and said, but pages two and three of his speech are full of waffle and obfuscation. Why have we not tried out the New Zealand Kiwibank model? The Minister said that we have done so, that we have stakeholders and that we are looking at reports, but in the middle of this, AIB and Ulster Bank are moving in. The head of retail banking has told us this. They are moving in on all the post offices. Why have we not piloted this model? What is the delay with the pilot? It is a phenomenal success and I do not have to go into the Kiwibank. Its profit over three years has been phenomenal. It is for the people. It has captured 20% of the market, and, therefore, 20% of New Zealand banking is in public hands. In Ireland, 95% of banking is commercial, which is disgraceful. In Germany, which has the Sparkassen model, only 12% of banking is commercial and 70% is community-based providing loans with an interest rate of 1.1%. The model is the backbone of the German economy and it is the fourth largest in the world. Will Ireland even to try to copy that model and not let the other banks that beggared every one of us in the door? I will not put my money anywhere near the counter of a post office if I see the big fat, greedy, profiteering names of AIB and Ulster Bank on the counter.