Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House again for this long-overdue debate on the establishment of another tier in the Irish banking system. There has never been more reason to have a regionally-based, common-good oriented and publicly-mandated banking system. We need a banking system we can trust. If there is one thing we have learned from the crash and the financial abuses, it is that we need to be able to trust our banking system. I am a member of the finance committee, which deals with this subject very regularly. We saw how the tracker mortgage scandal has affected customers who entered into mortgage contracts in good faith with the banks. In my time dealing with this issue as a member of the committee, I was continually struck by the absolute disconnect between the banks and their customers and the disrespect shown to the latter. We see this even in the numbers reported to the Central Bank. The numbers increased all the time. Trying to get the truth out of the banks at the finance committee was nearly impossible. That is a serious problem we must address.