Each speech listed here is an edited speech. If you'd like to see the speech or debate in full, please go to the Oireachtas website and click on "Seanad Eireann" and then "Seanad Debates" and click on the relevant date as listed with each speech on this page.

ESRI Report (14/07/10)

Economy (08/07/10)

National Development Plan (06/07/10)

Department of Finance Civil Servants (23/06/10)

UK Budget (22/06/10)

Anglo Irish Bank (17/06/10)

Senior Departmental Civil Servants (Finance) (15/06/10)

Lone Parent Social Welfare Payments (02/06/10)

Public Service Agreement 2010-2014 (13/05/10)

Europe’s Involvement in Irish Budget (13/05/10)

Code of Conduct for Civil Servants (12/05/10)

Greek Unrest & the Croke Park Agreement (05/05/10)

Croke Park Agreement and Quinn Employees (29/04/10)

(Ministerial) Pensions (28/04/10)

Banking (27/04/10)

(Ministerial) Pensions (27/04/10)

Negative Equity (27/04/10)

Banking Practices (22/04/10)

Goldman Sachs (21/04/10)

Goldman Sachs (20/04/10)

Bank Bonuses (20/04/10)

Insurance Industry (01/04/10)

Public Service Pay Deal (01/04/10)

Finance Bill 2010 (Certified Money Bill): Committee Stage (25/03/10)

Finance Bill 2010 (Certified Money Bill): Second Stage (24/03/10)

Public Sector Reform & Benchmarking (while speaking on Finance Bill 2010) (24/03/10)

NAMA and Anglo Irish Bank (31/03/10)

Quinn Insurance Group (30/03/10)

Croke Park Public Pay Deal (30/03/10)

Anglo Irish and Banker Salaries (24/03/10)

Industrial Relations (Passport Office) (23/03/10)

Industrial Relations (24/02/10)

NAMA Legislation - Confusion (23/02/10)

Industrial Action (11/02/10)

Social Partnership (Trade Unions and Government) (09/02/10)

Air Traffic Controllers Strike (21/01/10)

State of the Economy (20/01/10)

Public Sector Strike (25/11/09)

Social Partnership (24/06/09)

Call it what it is... A tax (23/06/09)

Credit Unions (28/05/09)

National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) (26/05/09)

Overseas Development Aid (20/05/09)

NAMA (19/05/09)

Companies (Amendment) Bill 2009 (06/05/09)

State Strategies for Unemployment (30/04/09)

Proposed National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) (29/04/09)

IBEC and Social Welfare Payments (02/04/09)

Forthcoming Budget (26/03/09)

Resignation of Gerard McCaughey- Dublin Docklands Authority (26/03/09)

Industrial Unrest & Social Partnership (25/03/09)

Industrial Unrest & Social Partnership (24/03/09)

Negotiations for Proposed Emergency Budget (05/03/09)

Local Economic Initiatives – Credit Union Sector (04/03/09)

Emergency Budget Announcement (04/03/09)

Regulation (03/03/09)

Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Bill 2009 (27/02/09)

Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Bill 2009 (26/02/09)

Government Recession Response (25/02/09)

The Anglo Irish Ten (24/02/09)

Government Recession Response & the Anglo Irish Ten (18/02/09)

Recession Responses (17/02/09)

Bank Recapitalisation (10/02/09)

Stabilisation of the Public Finances (05/02/09)

Public Sector Pension Levy & the Economy (04/02/09)

Social Partnership & the Economy (03/02/09)

Public Sector Recovery Bond Proposal (28/01/09)

Economic Situation (27/01/09)

Anglo Irish Bank Corporation Bill 2009 (20/01/09)


Finance (No. 2) Bill 2008 (Certified Money Bill) (19/12/08)

Financial Regulator (19/12/08)

Social & Political Partnership for Economy Revival (18/12/08)

Social Partnership (17/12/08)

Banks Recapitalisation Scheme (16/12/08)

Statements on the Economy (05/12/08)

An Bord Snip – Public Sector Reform (26/11/08)

Banks Recapitalisation Scheme (19/11/08)

Economy and Banks (18/11/08)

Budget Measures – Agriculture and Education (23/10/08)

Budget Measures (22/10/08)

Budget Measures (21/10/08)

Budget Measures (16/10/08)

Budget Cutbacks (15/10/08)

The Banking Sector “Bail Out” (07/10/08)

Banking Sector (02/10/08)

Credit Institutions (Financial Support) Bill (01/10/08)

The Economy and the Banking Sector (01/10/08)

The Economy and the Banking Sector (30/09/08)

The Economy (30/09/08)

The Economy (02/07/08)

The Economy (01/07/08)

Economic Situation (18/06/08)

National Development Plan (29/05/08)

Public Private Partnerships (21/05/08)

Protection of Employees (Agency Workers) (No. 2) Bill 2008 (12/03/08)

Company Directors (12/03/08)

National Competitiveness (26/02/08)


Credit Union Savings Protection (03/10/07)

Finance Bill 2007 – Stamp Duty Change and Housing (03/07/07)



Building Societies Bill (06/07/06)

Credit Cards (03/07/06)

National Economic and Social Development Office Bill (04/05/06)

National Pensions Reserve Fund (03/05/06)

Finance Bill 2006 (28/03/06)

Decentralisation (21/03/06)

Social Partnership (07/02/06)


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ESRI Report
14/07/10 - It is a pity we will not have an opportunity to discuss the ESRI report. I do not want to get involved in a party row between the Opposition and the Government on this issue but I want to look at the two significant points in the report. The first of these is the fact that the deficit has risen to 19.5%. No matter who is in Government this issue will have to be dealt with. It seems that capitalisation is a draw-down figure and at the very least surely it could be made available on an annual basis so all of the hit would not have to be taken in one year because it damages the country externally.

The second point in the report with which I take serious issue is the infrastructure question. Both sides of the House have argued that we should have infrastructural work to create employment. There are two reasons which the ESRI, with its academic response to the situation have missed. One is a short-term employment bridge to create employment for people until more sustainable long-term employment is created but more importantly, it is an investment in future infrastructure on which we will build the economy and future employment. That message has to be got out there. ………. I do not want the Government running in front an ESRI report which is true in what it says but neglects a very important part of the future.

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Economy
08/07/10 - …this is a time when action needs to be taken. ... I have stood here and supported Government policy on the harsh economic measures in terms of the support to the banks, the NAMA model etc. I have argued for it and supported it. … Similarly when it came to the harshest of cuts, including cutbacks in pay in the public sector, the area that I often represent, I supported the Government in terms of the Croke Park deal and the need to do that. Responsible positions have been taken in this House in support of the Government’s economic measures. …. Everybody bought into it.

….. I ask him (Seanad Leader) to also remind his leadership that there is another leg to that stool. If we are to put money into the banks and to take money from public servants, and people in the private sector have also suffered a loss in income, we need to balance that by ensuring we represent the caring society which worries about the most vulnerable, which worries about those in need of support and about how we are seen to treat the marginalised and the excluded. This is an issue that we need to be seen to address and it was never more important than now.

There is good news this week from the OECD and in terms of the Department of Finance revising its growth forecast from a minus percentage to a plus percentage. These are good things. We hope we will not have the jobless recovery about which some prophets of doom are talking. We need to be clear about this. There is a good deal of deliberately mischievous comment with people saying: “We have growth but where are the jobs?”. Every Member who has spent an iota of time examining economic issues recognises there is a lag between employment creation and growth in the economy. We must ensure though that this happens. The point that has been raised on this side of the House on numerous times is that we do not see the Government policy which makes the link between those two things. We want to be reassured about this. I want to see how this will happen. I want to see how we are pushing for this to happen. I want to see proposals from Government

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National Development Plan
06/07/10 - ……the House should adjourn to discuss the massive changes to the national development plan being proposed. My concern should be shared on both sides of the House. The changes would have a negative impact on badly needed infrastructural development projects and on the economies of local areas in terms of job creation and certainly would have safety implications, … in terms of the provision of rest areas on motorways, an issue on which we had long discussions in the House last year and the previous year. This would be regressive, counterproductive and pessimistic at a time when we want to boost the economy. The metro project proposals in Dublin to the construction of bypasses around towns such as Tralee and road works in Belturbet, Sligo, Tipperary and elsewhere would have an impact on employment throughout the country. These are the projects the Government should be looking to develop It is what the country needs and should be considered in terms of the impact on employment. This will have more of a potential impact on the economy than the closure of Dell three times over. …. We should examine the issue so the people who advised Ministers can hear the political, social and infrastructural impact of what they are proposing. It is okay for people sitting in offices to think a couple of million euro can be saved this year or next but the long-term regulatory, safety, infrastructural, employment and economic impact must be seen in context. … we should discuss what seems to be an anti-employment measure coming from Government sources. We should stop the issue at source and find time to discuss the matter in order to bring our views to Cabinet right now.

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Department of Finance Civil Servants
23/06/10 - Last week I referred to the decision-making process in the Department of Finance, the absence of records showing how oral advice had been given, the need for a paper trail in policy determination and the recording of the advice given by advisers. I am glad to recognise that yesterday the Minister for Finance, Deputy Brian Lenihan, said he was initiating an inquiry to establish exactly how that would be done. This is very much to be welcomed, as we are all aware of the involvement of senior civil servants in the decision-making process and policy determination. We also need a paper trail to check how something fits in with general Government policy.

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UK Budget
22/06/10 - …. a levy was placed on the banks (in the UK) and I want to raise an issue related to this which I ask my colleagues to take very seriously. Last week, the Minister for Finance said… that the costs of the new central bank regulatory system would be borne significantly by the taxpayer. This flies in the face of what is happening in regulation throughout the world. Recently, people on both sides of the House spoke up about the cost to local radio stations of paying for their own regulation. We saw it was necessary, we conceded certain points on it but we had strong words to say on it. In the regulation of accountancy …. the accountancy bodies pay more than half of the costs. The entire cost of the Personal Injuries Assessment Board is borne by the insurance industry or the applicant. The Government now proposes that the taxpayer should once again be asked to go to the well to pay for the cost of regulating banks. It is grossly and utterly unacceptable that we should be asked to do this and I ask my colleagues on the other side of the House to raise the matter within their parties. …………. at this stage the banks should pay their own regulatory costs. Last year the cost of regulation to the taxpayer was €39 million. An additional 50 or so people will be appointed and one can add another €50 million this year. ….. I ask the Minister for Finance to come before the House … to explain to us why this is happening this way ……. and why the taxpayer has to pay to regulate the individuals who got us into this mess in the first place.

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Anglo Irish Bank
17/06/10 - The question to be asked about Anglo Irish Bank is very simple ... It has been dealt with by the Minister for Finance who seems to have changed his mind or, at least, vacillated on a number of occasions. The question concerns whether it is better to save the bank or let it die, or what element of it can be allowed to die.

I do not want to have the same discussion time after time. What I would like to see are the various top-level figures for the cost of allowing the bank to die or retaining it. I have heard various figures and cannot work them out or decide which are correct. ….. When one knows what the figures are, one simply chooses the cheapest option. I do not know what is the cheapest option. Knowing the figures is important in determining the terms of reference.

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Senior Departmental Civil Servants (Finance)
15/06/10 - I refer to a question raised by Dr. Michael Somers, head of the NTMA.. …. it has now been stated civil servants work to present reports that will reflect well on Ministers. This has not only happened in the past ten years; it has happened with all Governments along the way. ……… recently I have raised the issue of the impact and influence of senior civil servants on all aspects of the public sector and the work of government. This is a serious issue. If we are not getting clear viewpoints, guidelines and reports because they are being doctored and edited to reflect well on the political head of the Department, they are worth nothing to us.

One of the issues with which we need to deal is a paper trail and a trail of decision making. …. Michael Somers said people no longer write things down in the Department of Finance but lift the telephone and tell people what to do. There is no record there. That is an unacceptable method of decision making. There should be a hierarchical trail of decision making in order for us to recognise everybody’s input into every decision.

I would like a clear distinction between the role of the civil servants and the role of their political masters and to ensure decision making is open, clear, dependable, examinable, subject to stress-testing and done with the best interest of the citizens at the heart of it.

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Lone Parent Social Welfare Payments
02/06/10 - …. The most sickening thing to happen over the weekend was that, at a time when Members have been bailing out banks, looking after the finances of the country and the economy, taking all the difficult measures and agree that ordinary people are experiencing difficulties with regard to loan repayments, jobs, unemployment and so on, the Government began to target lone parents.

I do not want any Member from the other side of the House to recount tales of the famous lone parent who has four houses in America and so on. People on the ground are struggling …… who is advising the Government to rip off lone parents? Who does the sums and picks the easy targets? Who is so ridiculous and stupid as to put this forward as a policy position that is sustainable, measured, capable of being implemented and acceptable to the people? It is an absolute disaster.

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Public Service Agreement 2010-2014
13/05/10 - Many people who are considering the Croke Park agreement are wondering how they should respond to it. Inherently, most will want to do the right thing, but the question is: what is that? Instinctively, they wish to give the Government a bloody nose; they wish to have a go at it and all Oireachtas Members in that regard. My message is that if one wishes to have a go at the Government, there will be an opportunity to do so around the corner, as I presume there will be an election sooner rather than later. ….. As for the Croke Park agreement, people must do that which is best for the country, themselves and the public sector.

…. In Ireland we at least have a form of civic society structure that we call social partnership, whereby those who have a point to make can express it. I have spent my lifetime negotiating, as it has been my job to be a deal maker. The Government’s problem is that this is a bad deal. Intuitively, people will ask what is good about the agreement from their individual perspectives as teachers, gardaí or civil servants and one must struggle hard to find what is good within it. One can perceive the reason people are opposed to it. Strategically, however, when I consider what should be done now, my advice is that I am certain people should support and go for it.

When a young teacher spoke to me last week, she told me of her lack of trust and belief in the Government. She expressed her disbelief it would deliver on the agreement’s provisions and her wish not to do anything that would accommodate the Government. …. However, I keep telling people to put that to one side because if the Government fails to deliver on the agreement, we will be back to where we started and nothing will have been lost except for a short period.

Misleading information is being given to union members on this issue. I have met union members who honestly believe that if they vote “No”, keep their heads down, say nothing and accept the existing cuts, this will all go away and that they will not be obliged to worry about it. It is crucially important to demolish and atomise this false argument. I will outline the reality ... While I am no longer a trade union leader, I make this point as someone with a strong trade union background. The needs of the economy are known. It is also known that the Government’s harsh measures — the pension and pay cuts that have received little public acknowledgement — have created savings. However, these savings must be maintained. It must be recognised that the Government will be obliged to make such savings in the absence of an agreement. Consequently, people such as … the Minister for Finance and the Taoiseach will make the decisions in consultation with the Cabinet and there will beno outside influence or impact on such decision-making. Alternatively, the passing of the agreement would mean the workers’ representatives would engage with the Government, inform debate, engage in argumentation and influence the final outcome. The difference is having advocacy at that point. One must also recognise that what will emerge from the agreement will be a negotiated transformation, as opposed to an imposed outcome. As the objectives are known, the question is how we can deal with them.

………. the Minister of State should state today that this agreement was made in good faith and that it is his intention, on behalf of the Government, to negotiate it line by line with the representatives of the workers, if it is passed. That is the way forward.

The trade union members who are listening should note there are options in this regard. The consequences and impact of voting “No” will mean a return to a long, drawn-out fight with the Government which may or may not produce some gains or improvements. I cannot call that, nor can anyone else. However, there would be some pain involved. On the other hand, acceptance of the deal would offer great potential for reversing some of the worst aspects of what has happened over a longer period. Were the Government to fail to deliver, people could revert to campaign mode against it. Consequently, the most that can be lost by voting “Yes” is time. However, voting “No” would have huge implications, result in huge potential for a loss of influence and focal sa chúirt.

In addition, I seek a more public acknowledgement from the Minister of State. …… it would be positive were those who have experienced much hardship in recent years to hear an acknowledgement of this on the part of the Government but that such measures had to happen.
Another point is that as a trade union leader, I understand what is a work to rule. It means working to the terms of one’s contract. People not doing part of their work is industrial action, albeit perhaps on a limited scale, but there is a difference. The Government is entitled to ask what is the difference. It is grossly unfair that public representatives are being treated differently from other people if civil servants are refusing to deal with them. That is wrong and unjustifiable, irrespective of however much they might dislike them.

…..I have been misquoted and challenged on one aspect. When I talk about restoring pay cuts, I am not foolish enough to think that the money that was lost last year will ever be restored. I am talking about restoring the rates of pay. It is important for people who vote on this agreement to recognise that, first, we will have to meet the savings that are required by Government. As soon as that is done and established, the additional savings can then be used to build back up the pay rates of the other people in the public sector, and that is the way forward. Therefore, we need to make and embed the savings in the system and the continuing savings can then be used to try to win back some of the losses that have occurred.

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Europe’s Involvement in Irish Budget
13/05/10 - It might be helpful if both of the main parties calmed down a little on this issue and earthed themselves into what is happening in the real world. The reality is that the discussion document from Europe is hardly an assault on our sovereignty. …. The reality is that European conditions on budgetary matters are not anything new. Before we ratified the Maastricht treaty we turned ourselves backwards in order to meet its conditions, including a budget deficit of 3% and 60% debt GNP ratio. Nobody in the main parties felt that was any sort of an imposition or intrusion on our sovereignty.

…..He (Deputy Bruton) is correct about one thing — there is no openness in budgetary matters, but that was also the case when Fine Gael was in Government, I hasten to add. There is nothing new about that for the rest of us who have always asked for a more open approach to the budget.

Before we continue this debate we should remember that there are 500,000 unemployed people in Ireland and 500,000 people who are struggling with mortgages who know that were it not for European intervention and involvement and the euro, we would we be paying mortgage and interest rates four times that which we are currently paying.

For those people, me and unemployed people, the idea that Europe might be casting an eye over our budget is far from being an intrusion into our sovereignty. Rather, it is a great reassurance and provides a sense of certainty which I welcome. The idea that we can share our views and discuss them with our European partners in order to ensure that none of the 27 member states goes AWOL again is something which should be proposed and not opposed from all sides. I ask the Government not to take that as support for its position, but to recognise that the questions being raised by Fine Gael are important and need to be responded to properly.

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Code of Conduct for Civil Servants
12/05/10 - I move amendment No. 1: ……………………………. The fact that the amendment is in the form of an addendum means I do not have a problem with the motion. …. If the motion is agreed, we would put in place a certain set of procedures for somebody who might gain certain information and then move into a position of a conflict of interest. The same applies to somebody from a specialist interest group who works in a Department for a short time on a temporary basis, on the inside of a Chinese wall, as it were, in budgeting, finance or whatever, finishes his or her contract and moves out.

One cannot have a person coming in the door with a whole set of skills, which are welcome, learning a whole new insight into what is happening and then leaving and selling his or her wares to the opposition. There is nothing new about this; I have raised it many times. … We need a certain level of complementary staff. It is not about people leaving; it also about people coming in. It also raises questions about people in senior positions who have retired from a Department being brought in as consultants to work for a period of time. That needs to be covered, and that is why our amendment does exactly that.

….. a situation which arose in the meeting of the Committee of Public Accounts last week. We have had many long debates in this House about the lack of certain personnel in the Department of Finance. I have the highest respect for the intellectual capacity of the members of the Department of Finance. Anything I say should not be misunderstood in any way but ties into the comments of the Secretary General of the Department last week, to which I will refer.

Apparently there were no economists in the Department at the time of the crisis. Everyone was prepared to blame the Department for that. I raised the issue but never got an answer. Why was that the case? It so happened that I knew the answer to the question. We could not afford to pay economists who had the skill sets we wanted to stay in the public sector and we had no way around that. They all leaked to the private sector. The point of my amendment is to ensure we can reverse the situation and address how we can bring a skill set back from the private sector if we want to do that.

……….. He (Secretary General of the Department of Finance, Mr. Kevin Cardiff) said: One of my colleagues is giving me lists of qualifications of staff in the Department which I can read out. It is a highly educated bunch, with a wide range of relevant skills and qualifications. Getting to more of the specifics, the fact of holding a particular degree in a particular discipline does not necessarily qualify you for the range of things that can arise. It is a more specific expertise, I think, the Deputy is talking about.

I completely agree with that.…. I wish to emphasise another comment Mr. Cardiff made: “I do not believe the Department of Finance currently has sufficient expertise to deal with the issues at hand.” It is a very fair, honest and open comment. No one else seems to think it was important. … Is it because of embargoes in the public sector or restrictive pay arrangements in the Civil Service? If it is, I want to know about it.

We know we have expertise of a general nature in the Department, namely, people who can do what is required of them as civil servants. We have listened to the Secretary General of the Department who has said the skill set level needs to be increased. The world of finance is becoming more and more complex. Contracts for difference can be in 24 different forms and special purpose vehicles can be in a million different forms. We have to understand banking, risk assessment and management and credit rating, which we know about and which is being discussed in Europe which may set up an official European credit rating agency. All these things are happening. Where are the people to do it?

My reason for tabling the amendment cannot be questioned. …. The amendment complements the motion and must be considered from that point of view. It is a very serious issue.…. I honestly believe that if we made this one change in the Civil Service, it would transform it, release huge energy and expertise and open competition for all promoted posts in the Civil Service, which is supposed to be Green Party policy. That single change would allow civil servants, who have extraordinary intellectual ability, to fight for their places, and I have no doubt they would do so.

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Greek Unrest & the Croke Park Agreement
05/05/10 - ….. the House should discuss what is happening in Greece but perhaps from a different perspective. Like their counterparts in Greece, Irish workers are also extraordinarily angry and resentful and morale is low in both the public and private sectors. The Croke Park agreement is an attempt to deal with the situation in the public sector….. The global mismanagement of the economies of the world has found expression on the streets in Athens, with three people dead today. This is because people were not given a way of dealing with it. The need for the House to discuss the elements of the Croke Park agreement so that people can understand it has been raised in the House on many occasions ... There is a great deal of misinformation and incorrect information about it. Many ordinary public sector workers believe they have no choice, that voting “No” is their best protection and that if they vote “Yes”, changes will be imposed. We need to explain to them that what is involved in this agreement is change by negotiation, not imposed change. We need to show them that voting “No” offers no protection whatever but is simply a case of walking away from decisions that have to be made by Government without the input of the unions or others…. Rather than allow things fall apart and find expression, I want Ministers to … bolster the agreement by showing their bona fides and their commitment to both the spirit and the letter of the agreement and to fight with it and for it.

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Croke Park Agreement and Quinn Employees
29/04/10 - … Members are aware that public sector or construction workers who are out of work or the Quinn Group workers who face job losses are not those who can be held responsible for the mess the country is in. There is a responsibility on Members … to tell the people that to get out of this mess, it may be necessary to do things that appear to be supportive of the Government without intending to so do. I refer to the Croke Park agreement as one of them. As I stated, those voting on it are not the ones who created this mess and they should not be blamed to pay the price, any more than the other groups I mentioned. Once again, the responsibility falls on those at the bottom of the line and it appears as though this is the hard strategic choice facing us. Members must send a message to the people that their own self-interest, as well as the national interest, probably points in the direction of supporting the Croke Park agreement, however much they may wish to have a go at the Government. Responsibility also falls on the Government side to tell the people there will be a chance for those who wish to give the Government a bloody nose to do so at the next election. While that will be the time to deal with that desire, as of now we must deal with and face other issues.

I raise this point because a debate is required on the subject to express a view that will find at least some recognition among the aforementioned groups, namely, the unemployed, public sector workers and those facing difficult times such as the Quinn Group employees, etc. …. strategic decisions must be taken that may not be attractive but which may not be the worst decisions before us. In that regard, I seek a debate specifically on the Croke Park agreement but in the context of the wider issues hitting workers within the economy. For instance, people may say what they wish, but the absence of a trade union to fight, argue and negotiate for the Quinn Group workers is a sad state of affairs. I ask some of my trade union colleagues whether any of them would be prepared to step into the breach and take up the cudgels on their behalf and work for them. Even though they were not in trade unions, they deserve support and help at this time.

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(Ministerial) Pensions
28/04/10 - I listened today to a Member of the House who, not happy enough with the mess that has been created in the profession of politics in the past three or four days during the undirected, misguided and unintelligent debate on pensions said we should look at retired politicians working in other parts of the public sector, perhaps in order to cut back their pensions also. It is only a matter of time before we look at retired teachers, gardaí or Army officers doing some extra work here and there. It is time leadership was shown on the issue. I am with the Taoiseach on this one: it is for people themselves to make their own personal decisions. Apart from this, I would like people to reflect on what we have done in politics. …. The only group among the total of 500,000 public servants who were deprived of their long service increment were Members of both Houses, yet we ask people to enter politics. Let us take as an example a person aged 30 years on the brink of a very successful career - a high-flier. Let us say a person has been in the Oireachtas for 20 years but loses his or her seat at 50 years of age, having put family security at risk and a career on hold. He or she will be without a pension or payment for 15 years. Who will enter politics if we make such a change?

…. the Ministerial and Parliamentary Offices Act was … brought forward in the hungry 1930s and 1940s when it was considered important to draw people in who could make a contribution to public life and that they should have some element of comfort and safety. ….The way we are going no one will enter public life. This will never be an issue for me because I will never be a Minister. However, I speak as someone who has a passion for the job which we are sending down the sink. We are running in front of a populist press, afraid to take on issues and argue the point. Of course, we should correct what needs to be corrected; some corrections were made in recent days, with which I do not disagree, but that is not the point.

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Banking
27/04/10 - We should begin by defining what a bank is, as that would help us in the future. Having banks which were too big fail in the system is what led to the huge problems in the American economy. It was not stated in quite these terms in the Irish economy, but it led to the same outcome.
In Ireland banks stopped being banks some years ago; they became financial institutions which bought building societies, stock brokering firms and insurance companies. They were on all sides of the argument. The consequence was that the local bank stopped being the local bank; it became a provincial office for a business director in Dublin. They lost expertise.

….. In the same way we have lost banking skills. The local bank manager in a small town knew the businessman who came into his or her office to seek a loan. He or she made an assessment of the risk and the value of the loan to the business. He or she made other assessments, including based on previous experience. He or she also knew if the person concerned had been doing business in another bank in the town because bank managers knew each other and shared information. That stopped happening. Bank managers were under pressure to lend as much money as possible and lost the discretionary power to make decisions which were all made at the level above them. Consequently, they did not do this anymore. Effectively, they stopped being bankers. We speak regularly about the importance of money being available for small and medium enterprises. Some money is available, but the banks are afraid to lend; they can no longer make these assessments.

…. the role of the credit unions. Irish credit unions have shown the value of assessing sub-prime risk. Many commentators use the phrase “sub-prime risk” as if it was the worst thing in the world. There is nothing wrong with it if the risk is managed. If the local credit union tenders a loan to someone who failed to get one from the banks in order that he or she can put up new shelving and extend his or her shop, if the members of the credit committee pass the shop as they go to their meetings and see that the work has not been done, someone will lift the telephone to find out what is happening with the money. There was hands-on management of the sub-prime risk. On the sub-prime risk that brought the American company down, it involved people of straw with no assets or income being signed up to pay $5,000 a year for 20 years; that instrument was then sold on for a percentage of the value and it was then sold on to someone else. Eventually the person facing the risk had nothing to do with the original product. Banks should be required to face a degree of the risk involved in any loans they make. They are required to manage, shepherd and guide them. That is hugely important.

The other practice that should be ruled out is that of Goldman Sachs, which took both sides of a risk. In other words, that organisation encouraged people to make chancy investments which it had been advised would fail. …. To make matters worse, it did something it does all the time, namely, using the differences between regulations in different jurisdictions. …. UK and Irish law puts great stress on caveat emptor, or buyer beware. If one buys into a dicey operation in this country … it is judged that one should have assessed the risk. The law here says buyer beware and the consumer pays whereas in Europe there is much stronger support for the consumer. Goldman Sachs knew that and therefore channelled this operation through the UK.

We also must look for global regulation rather than having, for example, one system in the United States under the Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, and another in the UK, under its most recent name, the Financial Services Authority, FSA.

…. We should remember that although the focus is currently on auditing governance is the real issue. … That is the reality, no matter what amount of auditing we put in place. When auditing was established in Victorian times, the function of the auditor was described as that of a watchdog, not a bloodhound. That is the reality. An auditor can only deal with the information he or she is given. If there is a lack of information, for example, where one bank does not reveal major transfers or another bank orders all its senior executives not to disclose certain fundamental facts about significant transactions, that is governance. No auditor will ever find that. It does not matter how strong the auditing system is if there is not good governance. Good governance means people being confident enough to say, “I do not actually understand this; explain it to me again”, and, after hearing the explanation, saying, “I still do not understand that — can you spell it out for me?” Until we have people like that on the boards of banks we will never make the system work.

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(Ministerial) Pensions
27/04/10 - ….. In recent days, the media has made a great sport of chasing people around asking whether they will give back their pensions etc. While this serves as an excellent diversion and distraction, serious issues have arisen which need to be discussed. I would welcome a debate on what principles should govern pension entitlements and how pensions should be paid out. If changes are required, we should make them. No one, however, is engaging in the type of detailed examination of the issue required.

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Negative Equity
27/04/10 - ….. People who are experiencing negative equity may be forced to sell their homes in the next year or two and will need support. I make a distinction between those who cannot repay their mortgages … and those who must, for some reason, sell their homes. The latter group will find themselves paying off the difference between the sale price and the value of the mortgage for the rest of their lives.

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Banking Practices
22/04/10 - In recent times it is interesting to see how the different standards apply. We noted recently that Bishop Jim Moriarty’s resignation was accepted by the Vatican on the basis that he felt he should have challenged the culture, and people accept that, rightly or wrongly. If we take a parallel situation within the banking industry, we are aware that there were at least 15 senior bankers who accepted an e-mail directing them to prevent information getting to the market and to consumers and investors and, effectively, they co-operated and colluded with this culture. Everybody seems to believe we should deal with the person who sent out the e-mail, and this is where the problem starts and continues. It is akin to Germany in the Second World War where people said they just did what they were told. There can be no excuses for people who voluntarily colluded in this wrong involving people losing money and which led to many of the current problems in the State. This is going on all over the place and I would like if we could get a clear indication that action will be taken in this regard. It is just not acceptable.

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Goldman Sachs
21/04/10 - …. It is important to see where we stand in this situation. Goldman Sachs deliberately routed that appalling monetary instrument through the UK, even though it was a European issue, because of the UK law of caveat emptor or buyer beware. There is far greater consumer protection in Europe than in the UK and Ireland so Goldman Sachs very deliberately did this. It breaches all ethics. Many companies refused to have anything to do with the instrument it sold. There is an issue in this regard and the Irish Government should take a stand on it.

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Goldman Sachs
20/04/10 - It is important to recognise that the Financial Services Authority in the UK has commenced an investigation into Goldman Sachs, a bank described by the British Prime Minister as being morally bankrupt. This is a bank which, for instance, has in recent times put together products for ordinary investors, products made up of investments, information on which was that they would fail. Having induced ordinary innocents to invest in those products, Goldman Sachs, as a bank, then took a futurist bet on that failure. In other words, it was winning both ways. The British Government has decided it will have no more to do with that bank. I would like a guarantee from the Irish Government … that we will not be tainted by any involvement or investment in any products, services or consultancies provided by Goldman Sachs.

….. It appears to me that this is a classical example of the two-handed approach coming from some of the banks who simply played ordinary punters like violins and took money from them time and again. I would like if a Member of Government could come to the House and convince us we will not be involved in anything to do with Goldman Sachs and that Irish industry or development will not be in any way connected with it.

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Bank Bonuses
20/04/10 - …. there are specific issues which are driving ordinary people berserk, including the Fingleton million and the €1 million plus bonus paid to the chief executive officer of Bank of Ireland. …… people should know that the Government has explained this by saying it was contractually bound to pay this money, which I understand. I must, however, put on record that the chief executive officer of every semi-State body in this country had similar contractual rights to a bonus and, as far as I am aware, every one of them voluntarily gave up their right to that bonus this year. …. I believe moral pressure should be applied to have this matter dealt with. The Government is correct. I have no doubt there was in place a contractual obligation. However, that does not mean the Government should not make perfectly clear where it stands on the matter so that ordinary people can share that view.

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Insurance Industry
01/04/10 -…. I was very involved in the drafting of the Personal Injuries Assessment Board legislation and in its passage through the House. I am currently the vice chair of the Personal Injuries Assessment Board. …... Since Governments made insurance a big issue … the cost of insurance reduced by almost 41% until January 2008. However, it has gone up by 17% since then. I want the Minister of State to recognise that in the context of small businesses and individuals.

Many people are gloating that Quinn Insurance appears to be in trouble. I completely support what the Financial Regulator did and was delighted to see him do it quickly. Over the past year, however, some people in the insurance industry have been thinking that the Financial Regulator and the Government have been busy with the banks and that nobody has been taking any notice of them. Prices crept up over the past year, in particular in the first six months of last year and in the first couple of months of this year. We need to look at that and protect businesses. As late as this week, a speaker at an insurance conference said cheap insurance companies tend to be failed insurance companies.

Let us be clear. Quinn Insurance is not in the same category as PMPA. PMPA went out of business because it was using premia to try to pay for claims. That is not what happened here. … what happened here was that for a combination reasons, the tier 1 solvency level of Quinn Insurance was breached. ... I understand and appreciate the way Quinn Insurance responded to it but the Financial Regulator was right.

Our job must be to support Quinn Insurance in working its way through this and to maintain confidence in the industry. Quinn Insurance is a good business model, and I say that as someone who works at the edge of this business through the Personal Injuries Assessment Board. It introduced direct insurance, longer opening hours and early settlement which is now a huge part of every company’s policy, and it was the first company to go on-line. It has been a trail blazer in many ways.

There is no clear indication as to which Minister is responsible for insurance. That should be made clear ... We need to keep Quinn Insurance in business .. by saying that policyholders do not need to worry because this can be done. We also need to recognise that Quinn Insurance is not like PMPA or Anglo Irish Bank. In fact, it has been a victim of and infested by the problems of Anglo Irish Bank. … From a disinterested point of view, I would say we must ensure there is no attempt to undermine confidence in Quinn Insurance. Some 5,000 jobs are on the line

When PMPA went bust in 1984, an insurance levy was brought in which remained in place until 1993. When ICI went bust, another levy was brought in. Both levies paid off the money owed but a 3% insurance levy is still being collected for no reason. It is purely a tax. That is adding to the cost of insurance for small businesses and individuals. Will the Government look at that as soon as possible?

At another time, I would like a longer debate on some of the other issues creating costs in insurance. For instance, Personal Injuries Assessment Board costs could be reduced if the Government looked more closely at the regulation which is allowing challenge after challenge to take place to what is probably one of the better ideas to come from Government over the past ten years.

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Public Service Pay Deal
01/04/10 - I notice the media have jumped on the fact the public service pay deal is a bad one and will be rejected by the members. ... It is important to recognise that at a time when the economy is on its knees for whatever reason .... and when there is pressure on every public service, there is no possibility of doing what might be described as a good deal. The idea that the unions and social partners could negotiate an increase in salaries at a time when we are cutting back on items .. is ludicrous.

.. the public sector union leadership was prepared before Christmas to deal with cutbacks in salaries in certain areas and it was prepared to do so again last week. It will be a very difficult deal for public sector unions to sell to their members. I appeal to Members to recognise that this deal was the best that could be done at this time. It creates certainty and the hope is that it will bottom out the difficulties for public servants, lead to transformation and build on improved rewards from here on in. … There are serious issues involved. It is a very difficult time to be a trade union leader in the public and private sectors.

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Finance Bill 2010
25/03/10 - I move recommendation No. 5: ………. To put it in context, this arises from a court’s decision to grant compensation to a person. ... It involves the court being required to assess the quantum of damages or compensation to be paid to the injured party. The court makes the judgment on the basis of the life expectancy of the person concerned multiplied by the annual costs.

One is that enormous advances in medical science and technology mean that a person who might not be capable of independent living today could perhaps in five or ten years’ time make a successful recovery. For that reason the Judiciary on a number of occasions has raised the point that if an annual quantum could be assigned by a court as opposed to one large lump sum, this would be much more efficient and would save everybody. It would save money at a time when the Government is trying to cut back on the cost of insurance, and this would be a cost on a business enterprise or insurance company so there is a real cost saving involved.

…. The very minor issue here is the recommendation that if it is to be paid annually, equally it should not attract taxation. There is no revenue loss involved. It is just that the courts at the moment cannot grant structured compensation on an annualised basis…. I can anticipate what the Minister will say in this regard and I believe the Department lacks the confidence to deal with it.

Following the Minister’s response….. I regret the fact that the Minister has kicked it down the line. It is not that I do not have full confidence in Mr. Justice Quirke to deal with this matter. In fact, of all those involved in the Judiciary, he is the one I would be delighted to see deal with it because he has dealt with such cases. Much of the argumentation I have made to the Minister today comes from his comments from the bench. …. I am not suggesting structured payments should become the norm. All I propose is that they become an option.

With regard to asking somebody to examine this issue, I draw the Minister’s attention to the report of the Law Reform Commission, LRC 54 of 1996. …. As the Law Reform Commission went through this issue in detail, there is nothing new in what I am proposing. The report states the structured settlement scheme should be made available and that it should be permissible to operate it with certain conditions. Section 16.65 of the report states:

It follows that the only way the tax system might encourage the use of structured settlements would be “to use the carrot rather than the stick”. An attractive option would be to extend the availability of tax relief . . . We recommend that tax relief be so extended.

Therefore, the commission’s report dealt with every aspect of the issue and recommended the extension of the tax relief to the Government at the time….... The Law Reform Commission report is available and Mr. Justice Quirke has no problem with it. While I do not want to put words in his mouth, it would be his view that the Government should move ahead along the lines I have suggested. ..... Why do we need a further examination if there is a full Law Reform Commission report in front of the Minister?

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Finance Bill 2010
24/03/10 - I believe every joint committee should get a letter from the Taoiseach or the Minister for Finance stating that job creation in the committee’s sector should be top of the agenda for the year and that the Government wants to see results and ideas coming from each committee on job creation in each sector, whether it relates to energy, natural resources or otherwise.

I have not spoken to the Minister about my amendment because …. I would appreciate if the Minister of State would listen to my argument. … The issue is as follows. In the event of medical negligence cases in the courts, where negligence is found at present, an award is made to some person. .. The award is made by calculating that the person has a certain life expectancy and it will cost a certain amount per year to look after him or her. Therefore, the judge has no choice but to multiply the remaining years by the quantum per year, add in costs, legal fees and all the rest and arrive at the figure to be awarded. The award is tax free.

... Medical science has advanced to such a degree that it is no longer that easy to decide somebody who has had a serious accident will be completely and permanently incapable of normal independent living for the rest of his or her natural life. Therefore, the simple thing to do would be to make an annual award and put aside money for the cost per year.

This is what the Judiciary wants and what the insurance industry feels is fair. I am the vice chairman of the Personal Injuries Assessment Board. … I am very aware of what happens as we have very closely examined this area. This area was also examined ten years ago by the Law Reform Commission, which made the recommendation that such awards should not fall due for tax.

I understand the Department of Finance was agreed on this point until just before Christmas. However, it has now backed off due to a fear, as was stated in the other House, that a possibility arose that this would lead to its decision going ahead of the law. That is not the case. This is a very simple issue with no real revenue implications because such revenue implications have been covered in the original legislation. The amendment seeks to allow judges to award a per annum amount rather than a lump sum quantum.

I wish to raise a further issue. The then Minister, Mr. McCreevy, introduced changes to the pension provisions some seven years ago with my full support and he discussed them with me at the time. We were worried about the fact that in the case of a lump sum, it was necessary to buy annuities, which were very poor value. Not only that, if a person died, the lump sum did not go to the person’s estate but went back to the insurance company, so nothing was left for the remaining family.

The then Minister, Mr. McCreevy, introduced legislation to the effect that on retirement one could take a certain amount of a lump sum .. The rest had either to be invested in annuities …. or, alternatively, it was put into an ARP fund …. When the person dies, the remaining amount goes to the person’s estate. …. What is happening is that this income is subject to PRSI, which I assure the Minister of State was never the intention of Mr. McCreevy. One does not pay PRSI on annuities and he did not intend at any stage that people would be worse off by choosing the other option.

On the question of banking, we need to define what is a bank. One of the things that happened in the past ten years is that we forgot what banks are. Banks suddenly became financial institutions, building societies, developers, entrepreneurs and builders under various different names, and they were certainly involved in sub-prime lending and all sorts of variations of financial services. This cannot happen any longer because it is what created the bank we could not deal with. This needs to be defined under the articles of association of each bank.

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Public Sector Reform & Benchmarking
24/03/10 - … it is no wonder the media get it wrong when one hears a spokesman (Senator Walsh) for a Government which knew every line of the benchmarking agreement being so underinformed and unaware of what actually went on. ….. On the issue of no recognition being given of the value of pensions, it will not take the Senator long to find out that it is on the second page of the benchmarking report, which shows how it was taken into consideration, signed off on not just by the ICTU and the unions but by IBEC and a High Court judge, to the effect that they did their assessment, related it to the private sector and then reduced it from the top quartile to the second or third. They then applied the value of the public sector pension. Therefore Senator Walsh is incorrect. …… I know the Senator does not like it because it is a good story upset by the facts. He should go into journalism where he would be a big success.

In terms of the ATM machine, that was not a discussion about money at all. It was about the fact that regressive trade union members such as Senator Walsh, afraid of change, were worried not about the amount of money they were going to get but what they would have to do to earn that money in terms of additional productivity and reforms. … I explained that this was like building up credit in productivity. Once credit had been built up in a whole variety of things .. one could take out what one was entitled to, just as easily as one could use an ATM machine.

He could find out what was done by walking into his local national school where he can look at the difference in terms of the promoted posts for teachers and teaching, what they had to do before benchmarking and what they have had to do since in terms of middle management. … When the Senator returns to his office he should ask somebody to open the Department of Education and Science website and look at the reports on whole-school inspections on any school in the country to see when the last inspection was carried out and the report published. That was another issue of benchmarking. I could go through a whole list of them and every one of them was signed off by a committee established by the Senator’s Government.

I could go further than that, but if the Senator wants to raise a few more issues I shall bury those out of sight as well. That type of stuff reflects for me the difficulty of reform. All my life I have argued, mainly with my own people, about the difficulty of managing change, how important it is to a progressive society and what needs to be done in the public sector. I am delighted that the Taoiseach has now established a post for public sector reform …. I have ideas on how to do it straight away. There is a very simple solution to the issue of people coming in and out of the public sector. If every promoted post in the Civil Service was open to competition, this could be dealt with…. There is no point in the Senator nodding his head. His party has been in Government for the past 15 years—— It is just a matter of taking a decision.

It is funny where the term “unpaid leave” comes from. It is called short-time in the private sector and unpaid leave in the public sector. Is it not strange how politicians can take a double view on something? That is called speaking out of both sides of the mouth.

In the private sector when people are put on short-time and do not get paid, people understand that, but when it is done in the public sector it is called “unpaid leave” or something. Somebody might explain the difference to me. …. There is a long road ahead and it is not going to get any easier…. There is work that can be done in this regard, andI accept reform of the public sector is needed. What is on offer from the trade union movement is a cutback of 15,000 in numbers, which would give the Government its savings. One could travel as far as Moscow and one would not find such an offer. Ask any colleagues in any European country where they would get it.

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NAMA and Anglo Irish Bank
31/03/10 - I recognise that the Government has spent 18 months developing this approach. While I support everything Senator Donohoe said about the impact of previous decisions on taxpayers .. I have to look at the position of Anglo Irish Bank. In October of last year, Fine Gael quite correctly agreed with the decision to support that bank and its savers….. I am not saying this in an oppositional way. Nobody can claim to be right on this issue. People have to indicate how they came to form a judgment on it. As I see it, the winding down of Anglo Irish Bank would cost as much as the recapitalisation of the bank. The difference with recapitalisation is that we still have a bank at the end of it.

… People have to make the best judgment as they go along. The reality is that if we let the bank die, it will have an impact on funds and savings, on our international reputation and on the cost of future borrowing. These are real things. I may well be wrong about it, but I can understand the Government’s position. I will support the Government’s position, with extraordinary reluctance, for those reasons. …. There are other options. It is not correct to say there are no alternatives. There are alternatives. There are none that are attractive at this stage. … However, I am not prepared to cut off my nose to spite my face. We need to deal with the bigger issue of the Irish economy and the Irish people.

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Quinn Insurance Group
30/03/10 - I should declare that I have a remote interest in this in that I am vice-chair of the Injuries Board, which deals with this company all the time. The last thing we need in this country is to lose an insurance company. Insurance has been competitive for the last four or five years. Five years ago in this House, we were talking about the cost to drivers of trying to get insurance, as well as the cost of insurance for companies and small businesses. We have finally cracked that but for the past year insurance companies have been using everything, including snow and flooding, to try to make the case for increasing premiums.

Losing a competitive company would be a bad move. It is important to recognise that this is more of the knock-on infection from Anglo Irish Bank. Anglo-Irish shares were being used by Quinn Insurance as part of its solvency fund. It should not have done, but did so and acknowledged it last year. That is the reason the company is now in trouble. However, this is not liquidation, receivership or examinership — it is administration.

… People should recognise that we need this company and we must ensure it is regulated. We must also recognise that the Regulator has moved in very quickly. The company is trading profitably in this country, but is losing money in the UK; that part of the business is going to be closed, while the Irish end of it will be fine. Meeting the regulation as regards the level of solvency is what has created this problem. We need to ensure this company is maintained in the competitive insurance market.

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Croke Park Public Pay Deal
30/03/10 - For the last six months, a number of us here have been calling for everybody to move in the same direction to deal with the economy, and I refer in particular to the social partners. .. It is good to acknowledge the progress that has been made today.

It is discouraging to hear the response from the media. All the interviews to date have been to the effect that this is no deal at all and why anyone would accept it. Perhaps it is good to know this because it will be very difficult to sell to the membership of the trade unions. I commend the union leadership for putting the economy and the country first by backing this agreement in these troubled times. The Government has finally seen sense and recognised the importance of this.

Selling the agreement might be more difficult because everything was new before Christmas, but everyone is aware of it now. People are looking down the muzzle of job losses in the public sector and huge amounts of flexibility taking place. I hope these things happen, and I will do what I can to support it. We should acknowledge today that we are moving forward.

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Anglo Irish and Banker Salaries
24/03/10 - We should have a debate on what is going on in Anglo Irish Bank. We should note what is going on. The progress on the investigations at various levels is welcome. There was much debate on the issue here and people were asking if anything was happening. We were assured that was the case. We now see that at least something is happening and we hope it will come to a conclusion.

There is also the question of the increase in salaries in the bank. People are upset about that, and they have a right to be. Rather than people talking about how good or bad that is, I would like to have a breakdown of the way it was done. That can be simply done. If three people are working at 100 units of salary each, which is costing the enterprise 300 units of salary, and it can now get two people to do that for 220 units of salary, it is saving a huge amount of money even though it is giving a 10% increase to each of the two people. We must be sensible about this issue. If that is not the case, however, and money is being handed out to people willy-nilly, we should be critical of it. The problem is we are not getting the information and there is too much coyness in the response from the bank authorities. I do not want to know the names of people but I want to see the process that was put in place, the savings that were achieved and the position before and after that. …The point I am making is that salary negotiations tend to be complex and we must deal with those in a way that allows us to be informed.

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Industrial Relations (Passport Office)
23/03/10 - As someone from a strong trade union background who has frequently voiced an opinion on such matters, I believe this action should be suspended on the grounds that it is strategically daft.… I do not believe it is achieving what it sets out to achieve. Having said that, I completely agree with the objectives of the people taking industrial action. I remind the House that before Christmas many of us .. called for talks on a regular basis to hammer out an agreement. Many backbenchers, including Fianna Fáil Members, told the Government to walk away from it, so it got what it wished for. Remember, when the budget came out, we said these lower paid civil servants were being very poorly treated, and we should not forget that. Let us also keep remembering that while all this is going on in Molesworth Street, as the Minister, in fairness, said on the radio this morning, this is the most efficient Passport Office of any capital city in Europe. That is the truth of the matter. That is what we had and it is what we walked away from.

I hear people asking why they do not have the decency to go on strike. Such people will get their strike as soon as they want it. ….. The reality is that unless a deal is hammered out and agreed, there will never be peace. …. We are heading into serious trouble and as with any other issue it can never be solved with brute force from either side.

Whereas I have difficulty as regards what is going on in the Passport Office, I have complete sympathy with the objectives of the people taking industrial action. I do not believe they should be going about it this way, but I understand their frustration and objectives. …. Nobody wants a strike, but they will if they believe they are being trampled on. ... I again appeal to the Government to show leadership and take the risk involved in such an initiative towards ensuring a calm and peaceful public sector which delivers efficiency, productivity and good value to the taxpayer.

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Industrial Relations
24/02/10 - I have raised the issue of industrial relations on a number of occasions. Some Members became extremely excited a few weeks ago when air traffic controllers went on strike for a couple of hours and referred to the bad impression this would give of our country on the international stage. It is worth noting that British Airways is facing into a major strike, that air traffic controllers and Lufthansa staff in Germany engaged in a four-day strike last week and that French air traffic controllers are due to hold a four-day stoppage. In addition, there is complete chaos in many of the public services of other European states. That has not happened in Ireland. Instead of picking up on small things, people here should be taking action. The Government has an opportunity to deal with this matter before it explodes. What will happen is that someone is going to work to rule, someone else will get annoyed, someone else again will react to that annoyance and, as a result, someone will be sacked or suspended. The matter will become a cause célèbre for those who want to create difficulties and it will escalate into a strike which will attract wider support and, completely unnecessarily, develop into a focal point.

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NAMA Legislation - Confusion
23/02/10 - I support, in general, the Government’s banking policy, although it is not handling the issue well and is misleading time and again. I have had to explain Government policy on a number of occasions when people did not understand what was going on. … there was an unexpected development over the weekend when, instead of getting €250 million, the Government received shares from Bank of Ireland. In itself, that is not bad but, given the discussion on the availability of credit, we should note there has been a positive spin-off which should be welcomed by all parties. Bank of Ireland now has an extra €250 million to deal with normal banking activities which brings us closer to the point where credit will be extended to small and medium businesses and people seeking mortgages. There is a positive side which should be welcomed but I did not hear Government representatives say this over the weekend.

There has been an argument across the House between the Government and Opposition sides about the extension of credit. In the course of the passage of the NAMA legislation there was a major argument when the Government rejected a proposal from Fine Gael that the Minister be given the power to force the banks to extend credit. I made it clear at that stage that this could not be done. I also made it clear here last week that the Minister of Finance, in spite of being accused of saying that he would force the banks to extend credit following the development of NAMA, never actually said that. However, he has led people to believe it, and he did it again yesterday morning on “Morning Ireland”, when he stated there would be legislative measures to ensure credit was extended to businesses that needed it. That is magic speak and double talk. He is letting people hear what they expect to hear, but it is not what he said at all. One minute later on the programme, he said that the new legislation next month would ensure that credit could be extended to small and medium enterprises. People again hear that this is something new.

We do not need legislation to allow credit to be extended. The ability to do that is in place at the moment. It would be much more honest if people were told exactly what the situation is and when, where and how credit will be extended.

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Industrial Action
11/02/10 - People believe the bitty trade union action taking place in various workplaces around the country will not lead to anything. While I hope that is the case because no one wants strike action, these actions develop their own dynamics. Small measures can lead to larger ones and annoyance among individuals can lead to a serious row which could eventually result in people losing control at all levels.

There has never been a more important time for the Government, the trade union movement, business leaders, including IBEC, and others to show a united front and act in concert to distance Ireland from Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal. We must move forward together. People should not delude themselves that the current industrial action will go away and nothing will happen. The Government must take control. Trust is lacking between the trade union movement and the Government. All parties must act for the good of the country.

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Social Partnership (Trade Unions and Government)
09/02/10 - The respective positions of the trade union movement and the Government were raised here last week, and Senators asked why both sides could not sort things out. I do not know the answer to that question. I know there is a total loss of trust and confidence,…. Many of us made serious attempts to look at the Government’s need to reduce spending by €3 billion, and to make many other changes. The Government was offered the opportunity to make €3 billion of savings on the basis that those savings would be taken immediately with pay cuts and would be there until such time as they could be maintained permanently, which would be done through a reduction of numbers in the public service by 15,000 to 20,000 through increased productivity, efficiency and a transformation in the public sector.

It was the best deal ever offered to the Government, but it walked away from it for reasons I or the trade unions do not understand. We are now seeing bushfires around the country, which are a reflection of people’s anger. People ask me whether trade unions clearly want industrial action at this time, and the answer is clearly “No”. It is total madness to be looking for industrial action, but people are attempting to express their anger in all sorts of weird ways. The Government should take a stand on this.

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Air Traffic Controllers Strike
21/01/10 - It is interesting to hear mention of the strike by air traffic controllers. … The last time we had a strike by air traffic controllers was 23 years ago, which coincides perfectly with the period of social partnership. ….. There is a total lack of trust. We should sack the managers who dismissed those workers during the week. They knew what would happen. They knew that laying off those people prior to the case being heard by the Labour Court would create industrial action. They were up for it. They decided to engage in a type of war but they now find themselves in a difficult action, which will get worse.

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State of the Economy
20/01/10 - … the need for a discussion on the banking inquiry. ………….We should also look at our own consciences. The airwaves are almost polluted now with politicians piously pontificating about everything around them. We can all look around and find fault with businesspeople, builders, bankers and others without looking at our own record, which leaves much to be desired.
I do not want to hear people talking about everyone else making mistakes. As many mistakes were made in these Houses and regulators were given insufficient power at all levels. …. We also need to take some responsibility for what happened. Let us not walk away from our responsibilities here. We need to be very honest and straightforward about it. This is complex. It is not just about businesspeople and bankers. It is also about ourselves, the political classes. We did not give enough authority to regulators and others. Apart from the Members in my own group, the only people who gave me substantial support on the compliance statement were those in the Labour Party.

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IBEC and Public Sector Strike
25/11/09 - ...we are certainly living in difficult times. People hold different views on the strike, but they should listen closely to what is being said. We should welcome the courageous stance taken in statements by leaders of the public sector unions in recent days. However, it sticks in my throat to hear calls for social solidarity from certain people. Recently I heard the leader of the IBEC group on television. That is the person who represents the six main banks, the people who brought us to the financial crisis. She said we should look to them to lead us out of the crisis, but they are the people who brought us to it. Somebody should remind her that people in Cork who could not get drinking water for the last two weeks had to go to her members in order to be charged €5 or €6 for bottled water. If that is the social solidarity promised by IBEC, there is no future for this country. However, we can listen to what is being said by the trade union movement leaders. They have to be courageous in their stand, must ensure they make the hard choices in terms of fairness and recognise that a pragmatic approach is required. The Government needs to make savings of €4 billion, an issue which must be delivered; therefore, hard choices will have to be made.

With regard to the announcement of a strike next week, it is very important in such circumstances that everybody recognises choices, including the choices to strike, stay at work or agree to difficult decisions. One must agree on the options to make the choices. There is a deal that can be done. There is no doubt that if we proceed with fairness and pragmatism, we can certainly move forward.

The attitude of the Ministers over recent days to the choice to be made in these difficult times has been quite admirable. They showed an understanding of where people stood although they were opposed to the strike. I spoke to people from different unions and backgrounds who were picketing yesterday and discovered that they know where the world is at. There are ways to do business. The Government must reduce the cost and size of the public sector and do so in a creative, fair, pragmatic and courageous way. By doing so, we can make progress. Let us not listen to the Pharisees of IBEC who are trying to lead us down the road from which we came and who are looking back to the future. There is no salvation from those who created this difficulty.[

Social Partnership
24/06/09 - People are beginning to see that social partnership is not an issue of principle but pragmatism. It is where one has people with different points of view, makes them listen to each other and gets them to hammer out some common objectives. For six months I have been saying it
is not difficult to agree the common objectives of all parties and find a way through in that direction. This is the time for real leadership.

I admire the courage of my colleagues in the trade union movement. Trade union members, like ordinary members of the population, do not have confidence in the Government. They are looking caustically and cynically at what is going on. They do not want another national agreement. Trade union leaders, like the leaders of IBEC and responsible political leaders, believe hard decisions must be taken for the good of the country in order that we can come together in the future.

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Call it what it is...A tax
23/06/09 - The Government of the day conned the world by not increasing tax through the expedient of calling it a levy.
This measure should have been called what it actually was, that is, if it looked like a tax, sounded like a tax and felt like a tax, it was a tax that was payable by everyone. Its description as a levy and the subsequent creation of a difficulty for the Judiciary has caused a problem all round. Someone leaked the information and a distracting debate has taken place.

The Government should do the decent thing and make clear that from henceforth, this constitutes a tax. This would take pressure away from everyone, as everybody would be obliged to pay it. Moreover, taxes should never be left up to individuals one way or another. It was disgraceful that this tax was given the misnomer of a levy. It always was a tax, constituted a tax increase, is deducted like a tax and is perceived by the public to be a tax. That would be the easy way to deal with it. I do not wish to listen to Fianna Fáil Members suggesting that a referendum is required to deal with this issue. A one-line Bill is all that is required to the effect that this is a tax rather than a levy and that would finish the problem.

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Credit Unions
28/05/09 - Three or four times I raised the matter of credit unions, in respect of which I have tabled a Bill on the Order Paper, and each time I was opposed by hard political lobbying that prevents progress. I am also opposed by a twisting of the truth by the Irish League of Credit Unions, ILCU. I ask that people .. take a serious interest in what the regulator of credit unions announced today. The Financial Regulator announced that he wants the reserves of each credit union to be not less than 10%. …. This morning’s announcement by the ILCU twists the truth in a language of desperation, undermining what we are trying to do. Those comments should be resisted and rejected.

Two months ago I stated in the House that almost 150 credit unions had not announced in their half yearly returns that they were making losses. They are not required to do it, but they should do so. This is a question of audit. The unions did not break any law, but the law of the land is that credit unions may not pay dividends if their reserves are below 10% and unless they have a profit to show. This morning, they are trying to twist the fact that they are not making profits.

The ILCU has not been properly engaged in the governance of credit unions for many years, as I often stated. It is trying to blame the regulator, and there will be a ready market for that. At least 150 credit unions are not in a position to pay dividends this year. The ILCU referred to hundreds of credit unions, but I have checked with the regulator and fewer than 80 of them will be impacted upon negatively by the requirement announced this morning by the regulator. The ILCU has questions to answer and it should not mislead people. The political world and classes should take a very strong line on this.

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National Asset Management Agency (NAMA)
26/05/09 - the Government seems to shoot itself in the foot every time it turns around. A list of frequently asked questions relating to NAMA should be put together and made available on the Department of Finance’s website to deal with much of the nonsense uttered recently about the proposal. I welcomed the idea of us owning the land at the beginning because I would like to feel at the end of the day that we owned it, but I pointed out there were issues I did not understand. I could not understand them because they were not explained.

It is crucial that we examine what kind of banks we want in the future. I acknowledge that is difficult to do now as we try to sort out the current structure but a number of fail-safe measures should be built into the system. Banks should not be allowed to become so large that they can hold the country to ransom or stifle the country’s development by not allowing cash to flow or whatever. It must be ensured they operate as banks. Even if they take on insurance arms and so on, they should be regulated as banks.

The Minister must examine new ways to capitalise banks. Instead of setting a figure for the capital a bank must have as an asset base to cover its loans, it must be recognised the figure can fluctuate. It can go down in good times and up in bad times. How can good and bad times be measured? The level of risk attaching to loans can be measured in a simple way. If one runs a business, builds up debt and does not repay it on time, one can sell it to a debt collector or through various different financial instruments. The market measurement of one’s risk is what one pays for it. …

…… Whereas NAMA will not be in the business of liquidating the assets and selling them off in car boot sales or fire sales, it will none the less take control of them and the collateral assets that have been put in place. This is a relief. Ordinary people do not realise what is going on and this is why the Government has a job to do. It needs to explain to people that this is not handing money to the banks but about taking control of the debts and managing them properly and sensibly that will not cost too much or more than is necessary and will allow us to claw back so we do not lose anything.

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Overseas Development Aid
20/05/09 - Throughout my adult life I have been involved in the development world and related matters. I established and operated a Central American charity at one stage and have led the development of a significant Third World fund in the INTO, to which every primary teacher contributes every month. I am currently a director of a South African fund for developing education in that area.

I have had face-to-face dealings with the Minister of State … and I have always found him to be open, accessible, caring and responsible. I recognise the difficulties facing the Government this year and acknowledge that cuts must be made. …. but I point out that some areas are more dependent on aid than others. ….When we are dealing with this issue, we need to look at the impact of our decisions on people in the Third World. Every citizen of every democracy has to share global responsibility for being prepared to give.

Christian Aid, with which I have dealings now and again, has taken a heavy hit. It is reeling from the cutbacks. Its budget …. Its work in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian Territories, Rwanda, Burundi, Sierra Leone, Colombia, Afghanistan and Angola has been affected. Christian Aid is doing superb work in Angola. I am not using this debate to raise the profile of this group, although I am keen to acknowledge its efforts. I could say the same about many other organisations. Would it be possible for the Minister of State to introduce some degree of flexibility to this system? If a particular group has a particular difficulty, can it receive specific assistance?

It is important for us to support organisations that work in different parts of the developing world. We all know people who have given their lives to groups that operate in the parts of the Third World, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. I hold them in the highest regard. … I would like the House to acknowledge the outstanding work such people are undertaking. Perhaps their endeavours are presenting Ireland around the rest of the world in a light it does not deserve.

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NAMA
19/05/09 - The issue of NAMA is important for someone like me who does not take a party position on this. ….. I am a firm believer that there is rarely one right answer to serious problems. The Seanad needs to deal with this. I do not see why the Minister … cannot have a conversation with Members of the Seanad on the pros and cons of NAMA, who will run it and how it will be administered.

There is a story in today’s newspaper to the effect that extra people will have to be employed to run NAMA. The same, I presume, would happen if we took over the banks. Who would do these things? How would these things work? Where will the shareholders be after this? How will the risk be managed? …. We have a job to do. We had better do it immediately.

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Companies (Amendment) Bill 2009
06/05/09 - As a member of the Irish Auditing and Accounting Supervisory Authority, I declare an interest in this debate. ….When the then Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Harney, introduced the Companies (Auditing and Accounting) Bill in 2003 directors’ compliance statements were addressed in a clear and direct fashion. It was subsequently decided, however, to avoid excessively burdening the captains of industry who were ripping us off left, right and centre by ensuring the legislation became what is known as “light touch”. ….. . Members on the Government side of both Houses as well as a number of Opposition Senators did not like this provision and considerable pressure was brought to bear on the then Minister. Against her own best judgment, the Minister softened the original requirement.

What difference did the change make? …. when this stuff hit the fan a couple of months ago many people asked the reason senior banking officials were not before the courts. It is my view, and only time will tell whether it is correct, that the reason they are not before the courts is that the companies legislation does not clearly state where the law was broken. If the original provision in the 2003 Bill had been passed, it would have required all company directors to disclose any matters material to the annual report. As such, the individuals involved in recent cases would have been in breach of the legislation if the relevant section had been passed.…. The reason for the change in the Bill was the pressure brought to bear on the Minister. It is not easy to introduce strict requirements in this area because powerful vested interests prevent the Government from taking the action required.

I will give a brief history lesson. At the time the offshore accounts and the mess involved with them came to light in the late 1990s … the Committee of Public Accounts conducted the investigation into these matters ….. The committee asked at the time for a review of the whole auditing system. In 2002 the then Tánaiste asked me to chair the audit review group. … We produced a report which was presented by myself and the then Tánaiste to the Committee of Public Accounts in 2002. … Another major aspect was the director’s compliance statement. It was also accepted by the Committee of Public Accounts … and on that basis, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment produced the Companies (Auditing and Accounting) Act 2003. When it was brought in it was softened and diluted.

Appendix B to the recent report of the company law review group deals with section 45 of the Companies (Auditing and Accounting) Act 2003. The Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement, which we all support, produced a minority report and did not agree with what was proposed in the review. Three groups opposed it ….. One is the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement and the other is the Revenue Commissioners. … I will table an amendment to this Bill, which will be an addendum as opposed to a change. I am taking the proposal of the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement … which goes through section 45 of the Companies (Auditing and Accounting) Act 2003 with an entire section of changes.

In the appendix, the director records his reservations and states that as the body responsible for encouraging compliance with company law ….the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement finds unacceptable a proposal which omits reporting on obligations which may materially affect the company’s financial statements. That is what I want to put into this Bill.

In the first version of the audit review group, when I asked we propose the directors of a company sign off on a statement which more or less said they were in compliance with the law of the land, I thought, in my innocence, that was not raising the bar one inch. I thought any director of any public or private company had at least such a level of responsibility and duty to the shareholders, traders, people with whom they dealt and the State. It did not appear to be the case. The accounting bodies lined up to say how this could not be done and such a burden could not be placed on people.

When I hear the word “burden” in business, I think of the last person who challenged me publicly on this issue when addressing a conference, namely, the man referred to earlier by Senator Callely and the then chairperson of Anglo Irish Bank, who talked about the burden and difficulties of regulation. We know all about that now.

We must introduce the necessary legislative provisions to ensure those who do not act honourably are in breach of the law. ….. There are well paid accountants and others who will manage to do exactly the same in regard to the definition of a loan and who will be able to allow their clients to squeeze out from under this legislation. That is inevitable. I seek a principles-based approach, whereby people are required to act honourably, comply with the law and do what is expected by us as legislators, by customers and by shareholders and stakeholders. I ask the Tánaiste to support my proposals in this regard.

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State Strategies for Unemployment
30/04/09 - I refer to the cost of unemployment. We hear the narrow perspective of people talking about the cost of the dole and redundancy, without any attempt to meet it with a positive, reflective and creative response. The costs of unemployment versus employment must be examined. In certain places, such as Germany, a company with long-term viability but with current difficulties that is forced to lay off workers gets support from the State on the basis of a grant per worker retained. That is cheaper than the cost of the dole or redundancy. It keeps people in employment and is a stimulus for the economy. It is something I have not heard discussed by the Government. … I ask for a response and to examine creative methods to deal with unemployment other than the dole or redundancy. We can look for companies that will work their way out of difficulties and get support for retaining those workers.

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Proposed National Asset Management Agency (NAMA)
29/04/09 - I support the concept behind NAMA. ... The problem is that we do not know enough. The attraction of the NAMA proposal is that we will own the property and the rights and that is an attractive idea. It is preferable to buying the banks, taking on their equity without being clear what our relationship with the property might be.

.. how will the process work? The Government can decide to value the property and hand the money to the banks or capitalise them against it. It could put money up front with a registered debt for the remainder to be collected through equities, profits or cash. There are so many different permutations .. There should be a discussion of the possible permutations.

Valuation is an interesting issue. .. there must be ways of valuing that take account of more than the market value. Things have an intrinsic value. If I hold up a 32 carat diamond and no one buys it, it does not mean it is worthless; it has an intrinsic value.

There are three elements to the cost of a property. We could use a property in Ballsbridge as an example. There are three elements to the cost of that property — the value of the site, the cost of building it and the cost of wages and salaries outside the building part and profit. The latter two can be worked out; it is easy enough to estimate how much it costs to put up a building at present and it is not difficult to estimate the appropriate level of profit and the cost of planning, engineering, architecture and so forth. That leaves the price of the site. At least one can arrive at certain values. One can create parameters and boundaries, and people should get active on that task. I am anxious to hear the Minister’s views on the approach to that.
It is not all bad news for the Government. It behoves us to look at this both ways. I agree with Fine Gael that the Government made serious mistakes in depending on the construction sector for income and tax revenue, and that dependence has created a huge problem. People did shout “stop” and we ignored them. Everybody ignored them and I share some of that responsibility.

On the other hand, the Government got it absolutely right with the deposit guarantee. It has been right so far in its approach to the banks. So far, it has not put the taxpayer any more at risk than might reasonably be expected. .. the budget deficit is less than that of the UK and our debt to GNP ratio is less than that of the UK and far less than that of the US. At present — I stress that it is only at present — our unemployment rate is less than that of Spain and other countries.

Even if it is not all bad news, there is no point in denying that the issues mentioned are putting Ireland at the bottom of the league. I do not wish to have Ireland bunched with Iceland, Lithuania and the other countries mentioned this morning. That was hard to take.

Certain things must be done. There must be a plan for the future. It must be a plan for job creation, to give a stimulus to the green economy and which examines the service level required of public services. I believe the Government should call the social partners to a meeting and say: “These are our objectives as a Government; this is what we want to achieve in terms of growth, job creation and the service level in health, education and other sectors; now, guys, tell us how to achieve it.” There should be agreement on the objectives, after which people can put forward their proposals and show how each of their proposals brings us closer to the objectives.

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IBEC and Social Welfare Payments
02/04/09 - … IBEC has today hit a new low with its proposal to attack social welfare, conveniently forgetting, as ever, that it was its members and main funders, the big banks, that led us into most of the trouble we face… Having used every subterfuge, trick and manoeuvre to deprive workers of pay over the last number of months, wherever they could afford to do it, they are now going for the final trick of saying, in effect, we should hit social welfare. Will the Deputy Leader tell the Government to make the rest of us share the pain, make the sacrifices and do whatever is required but leave social welfare alone? The Government would get a resounding “thank you” and support from the electorate for taking that view. It has been articulated by the Taoiseach on a number of occasions that it is not his intention to target social welfare. While he rightly made the case that everybody must play their part, let those with most pay most.

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Forthcoming Budget
26/03/09 - It is worthwhile recalling what Ireland was like before social partnership agreements. Many of us are old enough to remember the oil tanker strikes and the extraordinarily bad industrial relations in the 1970s and 1980s. It is worthwhile dwelling on that for a moment and remembering the pictures of a closed down country. That has not happened in the past 25 years or so.

Could the industrial situation of 25 years ago recur? We should remind ourselves of what can happen by looking at what is currently unfolding in France. …. In France this week groups of workers are holding big business leaders to ransom to fight their particular cause. Meanwhile, the French business and industrial community has warned the Government that it will not tolerate or implement a law that seeks to limit top executives’ salaries. Not that long ago we saw social unrest on the streets of Greece. That is why it is so important to put the message across. Whatever we do, we need to bring the public with us. Civic society is crucially important.

The advantage .. of social partnership to the Government and the nation is that when an agreement is reached, the partners — I did it myself for many years — will take the ups and downs and sell them. They will show leadership and put their reputations on the line by pointing out that, while a deal may not attractive in many ways, it is the best for the country and, in the long term, for their members. This is what we will be trying to achieve with the renewed partnership talks.

Certain commentators on the radio this morning, in today’s newspapers and in the other House yesterday said we dare not borrow. I welcome the Minister for Finance and the Taoiseach recognising State borrowing limits may have to drift up somewhat. The reason is simple. If we were to take €8 billion out of the economy, we would freeze it to death. Such a move is simply unsustainable. We must examine how we can ensure the economy and social services are maintained in the fairest possible way, sharing the pain at all levels. We must all then sell that message.

The Competition Authority’s role needs to be examined. …. We are hoist with our own petard. The Government cannot negotiate the costs of pharmaceuticals or doctor visits because the Competition Authority will claim it is interfering with the competitive process. If it means the competition legislation needs to be amended or repealed, then it should be.

Our energy independence is crucial. The Kinsale gasfield will run out in the next two years. Ireland cannot maintain any level of energy independence without the Corrib gasfield coming on stream. I am no advocate or supporter of Shell. I have spent much of my life arguing with it, criticising it or opposing its activities. However, in our democratic structure certain obstacles, checks and balances, health and safety requirements and environmental conditions have been put in place for Shell. If it has passed every one of these checks, whether I like it or not, then the gasfield should come on stream. If it does not, we will suffer. Political leadership is needed to bring this about instead of politicians shying away from it. The gas needs to be brought ashore in the safest and most environmentally friendly way because our economy needs it.

… we must take responsibility for regulation as we have regularly been dishonest about it. Not only has it failed us, the legislation which established it was inadequate and did not give enough powers. In 2003, no Member could understand why we were separating the Financial Regulator from the Central Bank. No clear case was made for it. We are now moving back into a more conjoined approach which I welcome. … We never gave the Financial Regulator the power to ban financial products such as 110% mortgages. Of course, we were quick enough to blame the regulator for not doing anything about these products when they came unstuck. We also need to examine how regulation has affected energy and telecommunications prices. If we do not get them right now, we will pay a price later.

I do not pretend I am exactly right on this issue, but I believe I know as much about it as any economist. Of the best economists, even the economists who are currently celebrated for getting their forecasts right, none has been right about the past year. I have all their forecasts for last year and the year before in my office, and none of them got it right. …. We should challenge those economists. …. It is not, and never has been, a science. It is always seat-of-the-pants stuff, reading from the back and not working into the future. We know as much as they do. I appeal to the Government to ensure that every decision it makes is rooted in people as well as the economy. It should not be rooted in one as opposed to the other but in both together. Social justice is as important as economic principles.

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Resignation of Gerard McCaughey- Dublin Docklands Authority
26/03/09 - Yesterday, there was general cheering about the fact that the nominee of the Minister, Deputy John Gormley, to chair the Dublin Docklands Development Authority board had resigned. Is there not something ironic about the fact that somebody who uses legislation which we put together and passed and who did not break any law but used the law that we had produced finds himself in a position where he must resign? I know what I disliked about what he did but one must also consider his expertise, energy and availability. We had this guy employed for between €10,000 and €15,000 per year, which is what he would probably earn in a day in his other working life. It is a case of cutting off our nose to spite our face. We should revisit this matter. Having made our point about what he did, how we dislike it and how the law must be changed to ensure it does not happen again, we should acknowledge some of the blame and ask him to reconsider his decision to resign. That might not be a popular view but if we are discussing taking practical decisions to sort out the economy, we can hardly do it without people of that ability.

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Industrial Unrest & Social Partnership
25/03/09 - If the proposed national strike is, as expected, called off, let no one be under the illusion that this will have happened on foot of what is happening to the economy. Those who will be responsible for calling off the strike do not trust the people who are in charge of the economy. They are of the view that, like everyone else, they have been booted by the latter. Let us not believe that this is the end of something; it is rather the beginning of something. We have an opportunity to clear out the individuals responsible for placing us in the mess in which we find ourselves and to move forward. .. we should discuss this matter on a step-by-step basis.

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Industrial Unrest & Social Partnership
24/03/09 - The country faces a national day of industrial action next Monday. This is unnecessary and does not need to happen. It is a direct result of the uncertainty about figures and objectives. The Government must explain to the social partners what it is doing, what its objective is and what the problem is.

This industrial action is unusual. It reflects anger and uncertainty among workers across the country. It is different from industrial action that seeks to reverse a Government decision or change a policy position, it relates to people not feeling part of the decisions made by the Government. ICTU tried to put forward a ten point plan that it could use to engage with the Government. This must be done and I appeal at the eleventh hour to the Government to engage with ICTU and the social partners to clear the way so this strike does not go ahead.… . It is easier to prevent this difficulty now than to pick up the pieces afterwards.

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Negotiations for Proposed Emergency Budget
05/03/09 - I am glad the Government is involved in discussions with the Opposition parties and the social partners and is trying to develop a strategy. The next three weeks will be critical. …. During the next three weeks, every opportunity should be taken to explain to people, in terms they can understand, the seriousness of the difficulties we face. They should also be informed of the remedial measures that will have to be taken and be reassured that the weak and vulnerable will be protected from the essential cuts that must be made.

It is also important that people are informed as to when it is likely that our problems will be resolved. One of the difficulties that always arises is that if a Government takes emergency measures they tend to remain in place for ever. A timeframe must be set down so that people will know when our current difficulties will end.

If the Government can convince the social partners of the need to take tough action, I will champion that cause in this House. It is necessary that we should do so, however unpopular it might be. It will not be easy to ask the representatives of the business community, the unions or the organisations that make up the social pillar to accept what it will be necessary to do. However, if they can be convinced with regard to the measures that need to be implemented, Members have a duty, despite the wave of unpopularity that will certainly follow, to sell and support those measures. …. We must be reassured by and confident in the decisions that must be made so that progress will be made.

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Local Economic Initiatives – Credit Union Sector

04/03/09 - There is also a sense of déjà vu in that I stood here two years ago trying to put forward a proposal for an independent savings protection scheme for credit unions. It was opposed by the Government at that time on the basis that talks were going ahead between the Irish League of Credit Unions, the regulator and the Department of Finance to do just that. I was given a commitment that the talks would be concluded and that legislation would be brought forward or at least there would be a conclusion to the negotiations by 31 March last year. Nothing has happened.

It is my firm belief, backed up with much information here and there, that the regulator is being stymied in every move he makes by the Department of Finance which takes the view of the Irish League of Credit Unions at every opportunity. The Irish League of Credit Unions does not agree with the concept of an independent, self-regulated savings protection fund. The league wants to run it. It is utterly inappropriate that a representative body should also run the savings protection scheme.

This is a classic example of where people will no doubt eventually blame the regulator, but I want to put on the record that the Department of Finance has refused to implement the views of the regulator on a number of occasions, as I read in recent newspaper articles, which apparently are true, where there was a leaked letter which showed exactly that.

…. I do have a problem with the idea of extending the structures and putting in place new structures of microfinance when we have not got the existing microfinancing system, namely, the credit union movement, properly regulated with proper levels of governance. ….. The regulator has time and again put forward guidelines on the type of prudential investment that would be appropriate to credit unions and sent them out, and they have been ignored by many credit unions.

….. it is also important to state that a significant number of credit unions are being run properly and prudentially with good governance. When the people went to form CUDA years ago … They left because they wanted to modernise the structures at a time when there were all sorts of allegations that the credit union movement was being used to launder funds of criminals and that proper governance provisions were not in place. This was why they wanted to put provisions in place.

….. Similarly, the regulator also put forward guidelines on governance, dealing particularly with how audit and debt should be dealt with. My telephone has been ringing in my office for the past two to three years with people telling of the bad practices in badly run credit unions such as the use of tricks. An example would be people putting tuppence into a loan account of €5,000 once a year to show it was still active and not a bad debt. This goes on and nobody can stop it.

We will ask at some stage, like we asked in the case of Anglo Irish Bank, why the auditors did not spot it. The auditors are watchdogs, not bloodhounds. They cannot pick up these matters. The only way to deal with it is for us to give the power to the regulator to insist that what are now guidelines would be rules the credit unions would have to implement on the management of debt, the provision for bad debt, the issue of investment and all the other areas such as accounting, auditing and reporting standards.

… the credit union movement has given a good name to sub-prime lending. It is the only sector which has managed sub-prime lending. Well-run credit unions have given loans to people who cannot get them anywhere else knowing that if they gave a loan to a person for painting the front of his or her shop or building a small extension to his or her house, a staff member on their way to the next credit union meeting could see whether anything was happening and if not, could ask whether the credit union gave a loan to that person and what he or she was doing with the money. The debt is managed all the way through. Credit unions manage the liability and the debt right through from beginning to end and do not sell it on.

It is a fact that one third of all credit unions lost money in the first quarter accounts which were published and sent to the regulator. … That is a fact and it is time someone did something about it. There is an unprecedented combination of bad debt, liquidity problems, investment losses and falling deposits that could create a perfect storm for credit unions where they could collapse and be lost. Many of them are not run properly and will not be run properly until we have put in place the measures I have outlined.

Until we deal with these issues, and do what I asked — ask the Government to provide liquidity while giving additional powers to the regulator — we are looking at trouble. …. We are now looking at new problems but they can easily be dealt with through legislation.

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Emergency Budget Announcement
04/03/09 - I welcome the announcement made by the Government yesterday on taxation. I am one of those who has been shouting for an approach in that direction for the last three or four months. I look forward to seeing what the approach will be. As long as there is a fair and progressive approach to taxation people will have to bite the bullet, and society will be prepared to do so if measures are taken fairly, honestly, openly and effectively.

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Regulation
03/03/09 - I would appreciate if the Leader would provide for a debate about regulation in general and how it works. What always seems to happen is that we run into one issue after another and the burden of difficulty always lies with the regulator. There is a classic example in this regard. I heard the Chairman of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Economic Regulatory Affairs on the radio last week telling the world that when the Financial Regulator was contacted by the Government about 110% mortgages, his answer was that the market would sort that out. I knew when he was saying it that that was incorrect and that it was not possible. I double-checked it afterwards to confirm that the regulator did not have any authority to rule out 110% mortgages. It is still incorrect no matter who says it. He did not have the authority to rule out any product.

Something similar is happening today. This afternoon on the plinth the ESB will announce a reduction in the cost of energy. Why is this happening? Politicians have rightly and understandably criticised the Commission for Energy Regulation for not allowing the ESB to reduce the price of electricity. It is incomprehensible. It brings regulation into disrepute. However, the reason is simple. Ten years ago many on these benches pointed out that the efforts by Government to control electricity prices was simply a device to increase the cost of electricity to make it more profitable and therefore more attractive to the private sector. This has succeeded beyond the Government’s wildest expectations, at a cost to Irish taxpayers who have been paying for the second most expensive electricity in Europe over the past ten years, completely unnecessarily, in order to comply with a policy option of Government to open up the market. There is something daft about that.

It would be nice to offer a view, be asked for a view or be consulted about the nature of financial services regulation. Many of us questioned at length the decision to break up the regulatory system and remove the responsibility from the Governor of the Central Bank when this was done five or six years ago. It did not seem to make sense then, or at least there was no practical reason for it. Now we are changing things back. We need to consider these issues seriously and we can do so in a way that allows everybody to have his or her say and Government may be informed by it.

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Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Bill 2009
27/02/09 -I ask for the Minister of State’s opinion on an extraordinary part of the Bill that I have read time and time again without being sure of what it means. It states: “AND WHEREAS the burden of job losses and salary reductions in the private sector has been very substantial and it is equitable that the public sector should share that burden”. In which sphere of philosophy is this idea rooted and has it a complementary meaning, that is, the benefit of job creation and income growth in the private sector should be spread equitably across the public sector?

Benchmarking tried to address this issue. .. The benchmarking report discounted pensionability and ensured that comparisons were made with the third quartile of private sector relationships. The issues being raised have often been taken into account.

How many people are in the private sector? If the workforce comprises just over 2 million people and 300,000 are out of work, the total number working is 1.8 million, 1.45 million if the 350,000 in the public sector are not counted. How many of the nearly 1.5 million people are in endangered employment? Let us be givish and say that half of that number worry about their jobs everyday. In this light, 750,000 people in the private sector are in safe, secure and well-paid jobs. I am saying this because it needs to be understood. Why are we not making an impact on those people? While we agree that “the burden of job losses and salary reductions in the private sector has been very substantial”, the Bill subsequently states that “it is equitable that the public sector should share that burden”. It might be equitable, but will that equity stretch to people in the private sector who will not lose their jobs, have not taken salary reductions and are on good salaries?

… this is the reason the Government’s approval rating has fallen to 10%. Previously in this House, I have used the example of the nurse who rang my office two weeks ago. She is married to a public servant and they did everything by the book, by responsibly saving up to put together a house deposit. … She told me that she worked in a theatre with a consultant who is extraordinarily good at his job and for whom she has the highest respect. She has been told that he earns between €350,000 and €450,000 per year and perhaps more. She asked me the reason he is not being asked to share the burden. His job is not at risk, he has not taken a salary reduction and he is as comfortable as he ever was. I cannot answer this question. It is also the question that 100,000 people were asking last week in Merrion Square and is the question being asked when people telephone Members. … Where is the equity in this?

As for the question of taxation, I have spent 25 years in my career discussing issues such as taxation with the Government. Every discussion on the subject came down to a single killer point regarding the Constitution. Eventually, the relevant Minister would tell me .. that the budget is a matter that constitutionally is under the remit and at the discretion of the Government and that outside parties or bodies may not make such decisions. However, the Government is hiding behind the Commission on Taxation as an excuse for not taxing the wealthy. … Incidentally, neither the Government Members in this House nor its backbenchers in the Dáil understand why this is the case. …. If the Government wished to hear the views of the Commission on Taxation on income taxation, it could ask the commission to provide an interim report of its thinking in this regard. A million things could be done, if the political will existed, but it does not.

I spent five years on the Commission on Public Service Pensions. … I do not have a difficulty with the idea of public servants being asked to pay more for their pensions. While fair is fair, I refer to the manner in which this has been done, its isolated nature and the fact it is not really a pension levy at all. It merely is taxation that the Government cannot allow itself to call taxation and so it is calling it a pension levy instead. Were it a levy to pay for our pensions, the State would do what it never has done previously, that is, it would establish a pension fund. . … We now are imposing a pension levy and the Minister of State should explain its purpose. It is not to pay pensions because were that its purpose, it would go into a pension fund. However, that is not being done as its purpose is to run the Government, which is what taxation is for.

What is the actuarial cost or value of such pensions? The last time I had sight of an independently-conducted detailed study was when I served on the pensions commission, at which time it came up with a figure of approximately 16% or 17%. The most recent study I have seen referred to figures of approximately 24% to 26%. However, pensions must be considered over a career-length period, which is 40 years in the public sector. The amount of money that is being put into pensions at this point is unnecessary for the pension requirements. … The pension levy is far too high. Were the Minister of State to convince me that a pension levy was required but that more money still was required, my point would be that the pension levy should be reduced to its appropriate amount, which can be done actuarially and properly, and the balance should be collected via taxation across the public and private sectors, above a certain income limit, in the course of a year.

In such a scenario, we would reach a point at which leaders in society, be they in trade unions, politics or whatever, could, with a sense of conviction, tell people the country is in a mess and something must be done. They could say that money must be collected and this €2 billion is needed and could outline how it is to be collected. People could be told they will be obliged to pay more for their pensions and could be given the reason. One then could argue reasonably for all these measures.

…. Has there been engagement with ICTU on its ten point plan? If there has not been such engagement, how can the Government seriously or plausibly ask for support across the political spectrum? It certainly cannot be delivered upon.

What saddens me desperately about this legislation is that there is no attempt to guarantee private sector pensions. Workers in Waterford Crystal have spent 35 or 40 years paying diligently and responsibly into a pension fund.

They heeded the advice of the Pensions Board and people like me. As president of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, I approached the then Minister, the late Séamus Brennan, to offer my support for legislation making it compulsory for all workers to pay into a pension fund. I made the same suggestion in this House on several occasions. I have always taken a clear stance on this issue. If somebody is responsible for mismanaging, losing or fraudulently uttering funds from the Waterford Crystal pension fund, he or she deserves to be jailed. However, I make clear that there is no certainty that this is what happened. It may simply be the case that the global decline in equities has adversely impacted the fund to a great extent. I would like to know which scenario is the correct one. … There must be a State guarantee for private sector pension funds.

Something similar to what I am suggesting has been done within that group of companies in the United Kingdom. There is no equity in regard to pensions. I cannot find it in my heart to support this legislation. …. but this Bill is utterly unacceptable because it is unfair and divisive. Our society is fragmenting before our eyes, with gardaí and Civil Service trade unions already striking, junior doctors preparing to go on strike and taxi drivers promising to clog the streets. The rich are pitted against the poor and public sector workers against private sector workers. There is no sense of community bonding.

We must work to bring people together, secure support for necessary action and move the situation forward. There must be a common objective that unites us and is accepted by everybody and which we all can recognise when it is achieved.

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Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Bill 2009
26/02/09 - I hear Members state every day they are not receiving support from the Opposition, mainly Fine Gael. When did the Government speak to Fine Gael? It seems Fine Gael is more than ready to offer support. The same applies to the social partners, who do not know what the Government wants. They were in the middle of negotiations with the Government that began with a phrase to the effect that all sectors of society should contribute in accordance with their ability to do so, and that the most vulnerable, low-paid etc. should be insulated against the worst effects. People said this was a very fair way to start and that they should get down to business. I listened to Senator Boyle talking about people not understanding the issues. How can the people outside the gate today understand why the wealthy people in the private sector are not being taxed?

The people on strike today and others know about the private sector because they have sons, daughters, wives and husbands who have lost jobs and who have taken salary cuts, but they also know that more than half of the 1.3 million private sector employees are in safe, secure, comfortable jobs. That is the reality and if I am wrong I will eat my hat. If somebody can give me figures to show I am even partially wrong, I will do so. My question is whether we cannot introduce a tax such that everybody earning over €80,000 or €90,000 per annum, in both the public and private sectors, would be subject to a new third rate of taxation. Why will the Government not do so? The reason is very clear — there is extraordinary dishonesty such that the Government will not use the word “taxation”. Its members cannot get it out of their mouths and they use the terms “income levy” and “pension levy”. It is a misnomer to refer to the proposed measure as a levy because the moneys that accrue will not go towards paying pensions but into the Exchequer. … I know a little about what I am talking because I sat for five years on the Commission on Public Service Pensions.

Society is fragmented because nobody knows what the Government is doing. Currently, one person in ten supports the Government. That is the lowest figure in my time in politics. If the Government will not listen to me it should listen to the people.

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Government Recession Response
25/02/09 - President Obama made a highly aspirational speech last night which, while saying very little, raised people from their bootstraps. He sought a united front and to jazz up the whole world. That is extraordinary by comparison with what is occurring here in that, while the Opposition parties have offered their hands across the House to deal with the economic problems in a united manner, the Government has rejected them. ICTU has published a ten-point plan and I have heard nobody reject it out of hand thus far. Various politicians on the Government side have said it is worth discussing. That is another offer of support but it seems it is being rejected also. Bearing in mind that the Minister for Finance asked us some months ago to adopt a patriotic perspective, it is a bit odd that the hand of friendship and support is being rejected when offered. …. The Government’s decision on the Fine Gael motion today is simply so old-fashioned and untimely that it demeans politics. If there were points the Government did not agree with, it could have left them out and retained some of the positive measures.

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The Anglo Irish Ten
24/02/09 - I do not believe politics was improved last week by the insinuation by the main Opposition party, without a shred of evidence, that the Government was somehow involved in this golden circle. If there was evidence, it should have been shown. I was not impressed by it nor was I impressed by a Senator from the Government side waving a piece of paper like Charlie Haughey of old and telling us that there were ten names written on it. If people have that information, it should be made available to the House.

That is irresponsible. On the same issue, the names of some of the people involved were published in a weekend newspaper. I do not know whether the facts are correct in their regard, but if they are, I have a question to raise. One of the people mentioned is the owner of a company called Mount Carmel Medical Group. That company has received permission to build some of the hospitals to be built on the grounds of public hospitals as part of the supposed co-location initiative of the HSE. I want a clear commitment from the Leader that we will not be so stupid or foolish as to give this company more profitable work to do if it already owes us €300 million or €400 million. We should not give such companies more profitable work that allows them to screw us again. Anybody involved in the Anglo Irish Bank debacle who owes us money should not be allowed to tender for public works, no more than a non tax compliant person would be. I want a clear understanding on this matter.

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Government Recession Response & the Anglo Irish Ten
18/02/09 - I am totally frustrated because I do not understand the Government’s strategy. The Government seems reluctant to do a fair deal with the social partners that could be accepted by the general population, even though it has an opportunity to do so. That possibility has been clearly rejected by the Government in the legislation that has been published this morning. The Bill in question will affect the rich and the poor. I do not know where the Government is going strategically.

I do not understand why the Government has decided to put itself behind the 8-ball in protecting ten people who owe such a huge sum of money. If any large company is owed money by ten people, its proprietor is entitled and required to know who they are. I do not believe a legal impediment is preventing the Taoiseach from finding out the names of the people in this instance. Regardless of whether he should issue the names publicly, he has said he does not have the names. I do not know of anything that would legally prevent him from getting those names. Perhaps difficulties would arise if he wished to tell the public who these characters are. I am dealing with the issue. He has said he does not know who they are. That is wrong and unacceptable. I believe he should know. I also believe he should make the names known to the public. We should all hear who these people are.

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Recession Responses
17/02/09 - … we are seeing a society that is disintegrating before our eyes with anger at the Government. After 15 years with the best record of industrial peace in any European country and the best record for growing productivity, the spirit of partnership in the workplace is about to be shattered. Clearly, we are facing industrial unrest. People might think they can face this down but there is no facing it down. It will simply grow, as will the anger. The Government will be atomised in the local elections the way things are going at present. That is not good for anyone; it is not the way society should go.

There are issues to be dealt with. We could consider a situation whereby the lowest categories of people being forced to pay a pension levy would be taken out of it and instead of charging 9.9% on the highest categories, we could reallocate it as 6% for extra pension and 3.9% as an additional income levy and apply it across the board on anybody earning more than €90,000 in the public or private sectors. That is something the unions would have to consider seriously, it would give the Government its money, would not have a downside and would result in a society moving forward together. There are issues but there are always solutions.

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Bank Recapitalisation
10/02/09 - I have regularly raised the issue of bank recapitalisation. I have no problem with recapitalising the banks but can someone explain to me how that can lead to the release of credit to small shopkeepers and other small businesses?

It has not been explained. It has not worked in the United Kingdom or the United States. The British chancellor was almost in tears because after giving billions to the banks over there, they told him to go away. Banks are owned by their shareholders who decide what is to be done with the money. If we put money into the banks, which is described as recapitalisation, the bank management decides what happens next. They can only do what is in the best interests of shareholders, not what is in the best interests of the Government, the economy or the country. That is the law of the land. I want to know how putting money in at one end ensures it will come out the other.

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Stabilisation of the Public Finances
05/02/09 - The Government’s action, standing alone and unchanged, is unacceptable. … I received a telephone call yesterday from a nurse who is married to a teacher. … That couple are struggling now. … I received a letter this morning from another person. She stated:
“It is my belief that we must all make sacrifices to pull the country out of this difficult time, but we need to target it as well ... I also feel that the way in which the levy has been calculated is most unfair, and that somebody on a salary seven times more than myself will pay only 1.9% extra...We are just a young couple trying to get by, like so many of our colleagues. We have never enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle. For example, when we finally made it onto the property ladder, we could only afford a place 35 miles away from work. This is far from ideal, when we both have to drive because of our jobs. My husband and I were already wondering how we would ever be able to afford to start a family, but now the whole thing seems impossible. This really does not seem right in a country whose Constitution promises to protect the family.”

A person rang me who has a menial job in the public sector. He is earning €25,000 per year. He has been hit for all these pension contributions. He told me that if he was paying his ordinary stamp in the private sector, he would get a pension of €250 per week, which equates to €12,000 per year and which is exactly what he would get in the public sector under the so-called defined benefit pension. Where is the equity in that? Surely these are anomalies.

When everything was supposed to be bad last year, Irish developers put €1.8 billion into the Cape Verde islands — the same amount the Government is looking for at the moment — yet these developers are not being asked to contribute. Let us get fairness and equity into this. It is fine to hit people like me and everyone in this House. However, the people below us should not be included. There is so much we need to do to get this right.

Prices have dropped in the past six months in places where there seemed to be no change in wages or whatever. Prices dropped by 20%, 30% and even 50%. How did those businesses manage to do that and still stay profitable? The answer is that they were greedy and making profits for the last few years. They caused much of the inflation and many of the problems. They should surely be included. If this is going to be a national initiative, then we must ensure the public sector makes its contribution, but workers from the public sector should not be picking up the tab on their own for what has gone wrong in the economy.

We need to bring a bit of scale to what we are doing here. We have much work to do to get balance into things. What we have seen in Greece, Iceland, and France is beginning here with the Waterford Glass workers and the students. People are going to feel completely disengaged and disconnected. We need to make sure this is shared by everyone. Let us forget about whose fault this is. Let us claw our way out of it. We must move forward together as a country with everyone involved and paying their share while recognising that some people cannot do so.

The Waterford Glass workers surely should have their pension protected. I do not mind paying into a fund that would do that. … Some people dipped into their pension, and they should be jailed. In the meantime, I want to tell those workers that this is what the State is for. If I have to pay extra to do that, I will be happy to do so. If people in the public or private sector are in danger of losing their houses because they cannot meet their mortgage repayments and if we are prepared to insure banks, then we should also be able to insure ordinary people, and in a sensible way that does not pick up the slack for people who have never paid their mortgages.

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Public Sector Pension Levy & the Economy
04/02/09 - I have just put down the telephone from a couple who were in tears, a nurse married to a teacher, comfortably off, with their own house and paying back their mortgage. They outlined to me what their position will be after yesterday. His mother is in a nursing home and he has only one other sibling with whom he shares those costs after his mother’s pension is included. The couple used to get a 40% pension break on what they were paying for the nursing home fees but that has been reduced to 20%. When all reductions are put together, they will be more than €1,000 per month worse off. They asked me if I thought this was fair. The woman is a nurse and deals with consultants on a daily basis. The consultant she dealt with this morning earns €200,000 to €300,000 per year. She does not begrudge this to him but he has been asked to pay 2% extra by way of the levy. She has been asked to pay the levy, the pension levy and additional costs for the nursing home, amounting to more than €1000 per month. There is something wrong in that system. It is grossly unfair and unacceptable.

… if the Government must take unpopular decisions then it must do so. … What I cannot explain to people is where fairness comes into the equation. Will someone explain to me why a person who earns more than €100,000 per year, whether in the public or the private sector, cannot be asked to pay a fair share through taxation?

We are now scraping money from ordinary people to pay off bankers and developers who are still in situ with their big multi-million pay deals, who pay no price at all. This will not hold. It will bring social and industrial unrest. It cannot hold at the centre unless we bring balance to it. One cannot explain to public servants why they must do what is being asked of them if there is not a balance somewhere else.

There must be mortgage protection and an absolute certainty that people will get a better mortgage tax deduction. Nobody should lose his or her house because he or she cannot pay the mortgage after these new changes. An absolute commitment must be given to pensioners in the private sector, where pension trustees have dipped into their funds to do the wrong thing, that the Government will take up the slack. This is about fairness and equity. Until we deal with some of these issues people will not accept what is being asked of them by the Government. Unfairness, inequity and lack of balance must be adjusted.

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Social Partnership & the Economy
03/02/09 - It is unfortunate that the talks involving the social partners did not reach a satisfactory conclusion last night. …. We must recognise that there are 2 million in the workforce, 300,000 are unemployed and 300,000 working in the public sector. That leaves 1.3 million people working in the private sector. Most of those are not on high salaries, although probably half are.

The majority of the public sector earn less than €60,000 per year. The union leadership found itself in a situation last night where it was asked to propose to union members that money be taken from people earning €30,000, €40,000, €50,000 and upwards per year to pay the banks, which continue to be run by the same people who caused the problems in the first place and who earn multi-million dollar annual packages. This will lead to social and industrial unrest. No leadership could propose that with a straight face to any group of people. … People are ready to make a commitment and are ready to take the pain, but it must be equitable.

One can put the question to anyone in the street, asking their views on the way with which the banks have been dealt. We are taking our money and investing it in banks which are the cause of this problem and which are still being run by the same people. It simply is unacceptable. No matter what people try to convince themselves of, there is no way this will ever fly. I appeal to my colleagues on the Government side of the House to consider that point. That is the reality and it will not change. We must be very serious about this matter.

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Public Sector Recovery Bond Proposal
28/01/09 - I would appreciate the views of the Members on the issue of the discussions on the economy. The trade union movement, including public sector unions, have offered a €2 billion recovery bond to the Government, which they are prepared to champion, support and sell. There has not been an adequate response to that proposal. This money is on the table for the Government to use. Two actions are required. An adequate response should be provided because it will give focus and direction and bring people together. Second, the private sector should be prepared to consider a similar bond. The two ways to raise money are taxation and cutbacks and many approaches could be taken. However, this bond is novel. This should be examined and a response provided.

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Economic Situation
27/01/09 - This is the challenge for social partnership. The Government should say let us agree on the problem, offer possible solutions and ask if the social partners can deliver, but that is not being done.

The Government is entitled to be a bit more confident. I have the benefit of hindsight because I am a sad person and spent a couple of hours last week going through what our commentators said a year ago about the year just gone, and it made very interesting reading. National Irish Bank was talking about another year of strong growth in 2008. IIB’s Austin Hughes talked about employment being broadly flat and said there might be a technical recession. Dan McLaughlin of Bank of Ireland talked about 5% and 6% growth. AIB’s John Beggs talked about GDP growth recovering to over 4% in 2009 as well as being positive about 2008. Jim Power, who lectures us regularly, said we should have a modest recovery later in 2008 and into 2009.

It is a good opportunity to ignore these people. They got it completely wrong so let us not be at their mercy. It would a good time to introduce a new section 30 to prevent RTE interviewing too many economists from here on in. They are misleading the public and are getting it wrong.

The main financial supporters of IBEC are the five or six large financial institutions. I would like someone to ask IBEC every time its representatives open their mouths what it is doing about its members who caused this major problem for us. They are welcomed as people who can solve our problem without any reference to the fact they caused it in the first place. We should be very clear about that. Bankers, IBEC and economists are not the people who should tell us what to do next.

It is fair to say the people are losing confidence in the Government but it is unfair to say it has got it completely wrong. The Government has not got it any more wrong than the governments of the US, the UK, Germany or France. .. four or five months ago, people said Germany got it right but clearly it did not and it is now in the same position as the rest of us. … we have a lower debt-gross national product ratio than any of the countries I mentioned. It is impossible to estimate the debt-GNP ratio of the United States. It is off the scale. It is right to say we have 2 million people working and a better infrastructure than on the previous occasion we came through it. We should examine these aspects.

We should not do this piecemeal. We should not leave people in a situation where they are dealing with a 1% levy and where they might also have to deal with an extra pension payment … That will demoralise people. We should examine the figures. If €1.8 billion or €2 billion is needed this year, the public sector unions should be asked if they can deliver on that and how they can do it. They should be asked to give it back to us. They should not give us a solution with wage cuts and expect people to buy into that publicly.

I believe in the recovery bond. If every public sector union was given the option of buying into a recovery bond, which would ensure our Government got money cheaper than we could borrow it from Germany or elsewhere, either at 0% or 1% interest or an interest rate related to gross domestic product and with no exit before five years, we would then get people involved who could afford it. There is no difference between public sector and private sector workers in terms of making ends meet.

I would go around this country as a union leader selling the idea of a recovery bond. It was done previously. Michael Collins did it in 1922. We should collect the money from the people for the people. It would be an investment in the country. We should show some leadership. The Minister should give us an objective and a target and let us deliver. We can do that. That is as much as I can add at this stage but we should give this issue to the people who we need to bring about a solution and let us make this work together.

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Anglo Irish Bank Corporation Bill 2009
20/01/09 - …. company law is an issue at which we need to look carefully. I want the Minister to indicate clearly his views as to whether a person needs to be in breach of written legislation in order to be in breach of company law.

My view of the world is that common law is clear about the responsibilities of company directors, a matter about which we had long debates in 2003. It seems any director of a company who acts against the best interests of that company, and the common good in as much as it applies to that company, is in breach of common law. It is also clear, as I understand it, that the compliance obligations on directors stretch very far and that we can pursue them.

We have to recognise that the people concerned have caused damage to the country; that, on the one had, there is anxiety and, on the other, a loss to others. Many pensioners, people with small amounts of money, have effectively gone to the wall. We have a responsibility to chase the people concerned. Whoever does it, whether it be the bank, the Government or the accountancy bodies, and whichever way it is done, this must be played to the end game. Those responsible should be brought to book and, if necessary, before the courts. That is the one action people want to see taken. There will never be closure on this issue as long as people can walk free having caused chaos and damage all around them. This is appalling, when one considers that a person can find himself or herself in jail for not paying a bill for a household domestic appliance. People have lost jobs, houses, relationships and pensions. When one thinks of the damage caused to them, the fact that those responsible might never be brought to justice should not be acceptable to any legislature.

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Finance (No. 2) Bill 2008 (Certified Money Bill)
19/12/08 - The Minister will be aware that I approach this issue from a disinterested, non-party viewpoint. The Government is making a serious error in its dealings and relations with the Opposition parties. It is time the Opposition was taken into the tent to the greatest degree possible. …. The Government failed yesterday because, in not allowing the Opposition parties to buy into its economic plan, it ensured it had nothing else to do except tear strips off it on the one o’clock news. …. I am uncomfortable with what I see taking place because it maintains an unnecessary divide in politics.

On a positive note, the Government has done as well as it could in its dealings with the banks. This may not be a popular a view but the bank guarantee and the decision not to put taxpayers’ money into the banks has been well handled. As we are all aware, however, it could go wrong at any time. On the Order of Business, I expressed serious reservations about handing €10 billion in trust to the people who got us into the mess about which we learned last night. I should declare that I am a member of the Irish Auditing and Accounting Supervisory Authority and have an insight into the audit process. The audit and accounting issue must be re-examined.

Four years ago, I pleaded in the House to provide in legislation for the making of decent directors’ compliance statements. We need a legal requirement for a proper, extensive directors’ compliance statement. …. Under the current legislation, if he or she makes a false statement, the auditors will pick it up. What is required, however, is to provide that directors who make a false statement or fail to declare a matter are in breach of the law. It is unfortunate that in the case which arose last night no law was broken. Trust has been broken, taxpayers have lost out and the Minister, the Government and the Houses have been damaged.

I also want to know how the audit committee of Anglo Irish Bank operates. Did it have knowledge of this case? Did the governance of the bank require that the risk committee be made aware that the director had received €87 million? These are simple questions which do not breach confidence. … We need to see clear action within the law. We do not need witch-hunts or lynch mobs but the spirit and letter of the law requires that clear steps be taken.

I want to know whether the audit committee met the bank’s internal and external auditors without the chief executive being present. What were the external auditors doing? It appears they simply looked at the books on one day. If this is the case, it raises a difficulty. … I want the Minister to tell me that the auditors were not so idiotic as to look at the accounts of the banks on a single day. They must examine the flow of cash in and out of the banks over the year. When the Minister sent PricewaterhouseCoopers into the bank two months ago, did it unearth this information? Major questions arise from this case. If the auditors did not find the information, what else did they not find?

As a public representative, it is my duty to put the case of the Financial Regulator. The authority of the regulator needs to be strengthened. I want the Minister to say we did not give the regulator authority to deal with matters such as 110% loans. The Oireachtas decided four years ago not to give him authority to do that. There is no point in asking now why he did not do it. We need to revisit the matter and should do so. …. The regulator may have done nothing wrong. If there is such a thing as vicarious liability, someone should have done something. He is the guy behind the eight ball, as it were, and may have to take the hit on this issue even though he may have acted within the regulations.

The Minister should look at where Ireland stands on the implementation of the eighth or ninth financial directive from Europe on international financial accountancy standards. A Member mentioned matters in the Irish Financial Services Centre were not properly regulated. We are one of the last few laggards in the European Community who have not implemented those standards. We should have done so on 30 June. It still has not been done. Why not?

…. The Minister has put forward a fine selection of people acting for Government into the various banks and it is beyond question that they are solid people. However, that is not enough. ….. they are people of the highest quality and with the intellectual power to back that up. That said,there needs to be an oversight body for banking. We have an oversight body for accountancy and other matters. If we had an oversight body for banking, what would it do? There would be basic uniformity of standards which they would have to apply and conform to, and it would be checked and tested annually. Any changes in governance or association rules would have to be cleared at some level.

He [Minister] is now discussing recapitalisation. I have asked him privately and publicly six times to show me the connection between recapitalisation and loans. He cannot do it and neither can anyone else. …. I have a difficulty in giving money unless I know it will come out the other end, so to speak.

Much can be done and I recognise that we need to get rid of the perks and million euro salaries for directors. Action is needed on those issues and the Minister should say what he has been reluctant to say previously but has been thinking. These matters need to be in the public arena to show people the Minister is in control, we will not stand for this carry-on and the banks will toe the line and come down to our planet. They must be beamed down to earth, as it were.

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Financial Regulator
19/12/08 - I argued three months ago that the Financial Regulator was the most appropriate authority to make a statement about the capitalisation of the banks, as no other body had seen the books. That point was not accepted by any commentator or politician in either House. The Financial Regulator was right, but nobody noticed that either. It was not said again. It should be noted that despite all the criticism of the public service, the problems in Anglo Irish Bank were discovered by the Financial Regulator rather than by a team of high-powered auditors. The regulator brought the problems to the attention of the board after they were discovered earlier this year. The regulator works to the best of its ability, even if some people suggest otherwise.

The Deputy Leader suggested last week that the Financial Regulator did not do its job properly when it failed to take action against those offering loans of 100% and 110%. I remind him that the regulator was unable to take such action because the Oireachtas did not give it the authority to do so. When the regulator was being established, I tried to give it additional authority but my proposal was rejected. I spent weeks fighting on the floor of this House for legislative provision to be made for a directors’ compliance statement, which would have dealt with the issue that arose last week. With the exception of the Labour Party, I did not get any support from either side of the House for my proposals in respect of huge issues like compliance statements and governance. It appears that we are being asked to give control of the €10 billion recapitalisation package to the same people who were involved in the transfer of loans worth €87 million. I will ask the same questions I have asked time and again. How can we do that? How do we know it will work? Why should we give this money to the people in question? What is the next step? A clear and old-fashioned case needs to be made. We will have much more to say about this. I thank the Financial Regulator for uncovering these problems. These people have pulled the wool over our eyes. Fool me once, blame on you. Fool me twice, blame on me. That is what we are looking at. I would not trust these people with €10 billion.

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Social & Political Partnership for Economy Revival
18/12/08 - If the Government is putting together a strategy to claw our way out of a recession, it is not enough to include the people and the social partners because there must also be positive political traction to drive it. I support the engagement of the social partners. I understand this week’s meeting was very positive but that is not enough. The idea that elected public representatives in the Dáil and Seanad are not engaged in this process, are not invited into this process, are neither consulted nor asked for their views is beyond imagination. I do not know what the Government is thinking. I welcome the Government’s document, Building Ireland’s Smart Economy: A Framework for Sustainable Economic Renewal. Those of us on this side of the House have been asking for such action. Even if I do not agree with the document when I read it, I still welcome it because it gives us direction and leadership. However, this will be launched today on the 6 p.m. news. The leaders of the other parties, if they are legitimately opposed in their response to it, have a duty to point out the flaws because that is their job, whereas if they had been invited in and had some influence on its development, we would have a different proposal. I do not see the sense in it. I cannot see where we are going and I do not see the plan. It bothers me because if we get the first step wrong, it is difficult to see where we go then.

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Social Partnership
17/12/08 - …. while it is fine for the Minister to meet the social partners, he should also come before the House. That is the real issue. To those who argue this is the end of social partnership, I say there has never been a greater need for the Government to engage with civic society. … Social partnership is the only forum where Government can engage with all sides — labour, business, the farming community and the community pillar, which includes the unemployed and various voluntary bodies. There is no more vital place in which the Government can engage and demand and secure support. This will only work, however, if engagement also takes place at political level.

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Banks Recapitalisation Scheme
16/12/08 - I repeat a question asked many times. How will recapitalisation of the banks help the economy? I do not want to be told that greater confidence in the banks helps the economy. While it helps bank share prices and is good for bank directors and shareholders, it does not necessarily benefit businesses and those who depend on them. I want to know what is the direct link between bank recapitalisation and the economy.

If the Government puts €5 billion of public money at risk in supporting the banks, what will it receive in return? While it is good the Government has decided to appoint directors to bank boards, what action is it taking on banking management and policy? Until now, bankers received bonuses and advances on the basis of the amount of business they had written and the amount appropriate for securitisation. I presume the position is changing and risk assessment and other benchmarks will be considered when determining what is successful banking.

We hear a great deal about €5 billion here or there but in the real world people cannot come to grips with the idea that we can set aside €5 billion to support the banks when we cannot support schools, we are cutting back on accident and emergency services, houses are being repossessed from those who cannot afford to pay their mortgages and companies could, with additional investment, create more jobs. … It is not good enough for us to be seen to be listening to the banks and calling them in, and the banks calling the Taoiseach aside and asking for things, while the rest of the world is going over the edge, as it were. There is something unacceptable about it and it needs to be explained.

We need to ensure there is a solid banking system. The question I ask should not lead to the conclusion that we should not be doing our best to sort out the banking system. Recapitalisation does not necessarily do what is wanted. Ordinary people need a precise explanation on how it will help them in the long term in their world, whether in education, health or business.

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Statements on the Economy
05/12/08 - The last time we discussed this we were in the middle of the crisis. That night, I stated that I was sick and tired of everyone in the House, on all sides, telling me that the banks were under-capitalised and that they were going to go under. I said that I had spoken to the only person who has looked at all the books and audits and he told me that they are okay. I spoke to the governor, with whom I had done business for 30 years while wearing other hats and who had never told me a lie, and he confirmed it.

I compliment the Government on not recapitalising the banks. It has been done twice in different ways in the US and it has been a disaster. It has been done twice in the UK and Alistair Darling is tearing his hair out wondering why he cannot control the banks. All he needs to do is to read company law and he will find out quickly.

….. how we could save and become more efficient in his or her area. ….. The Department of Education and Science builds schools sometimes, but not enough. … I could not find one county development plan to which the so-called planning section in the Department of Education and Science made a contribution. Consequently, the Minister for Finance woke up one morning to find large numbers of houses and people in Dublin 15, in the middle of his constituency, but there were no schools. If the local authority, which deals with planning, also dealt with building schools, it would know the population and the drift. The local authority is the guardian of the county plan and money would be saved. This is a whole section that is unnecessary.

The Minister referred to FÁS. I met some teachers in further education and asked how we could save money. ... They said that they could operate cheaper in the public sector. ... They worked out the per capita costs of the privately contracted FÁS courses and outlined to me that a similar course being run in the further education section of the vocational education committees can do it cheaper and, one would have to accept, equally effectively. .. The positive aspect of that is that it was the teachers in further education who offered to do that.

On the cost of tribunals, has the Committee of Public Accounts not proven that politicians can question and find out where the bodies are buried, so to speak, as cheaply as tribunals? Surely that would save hundreds of millions of euro. I could suggest ten different actions the Minister could take.

Senator MacSharry was absolutely right about the social and partnership model. What is it all about? It is unfortunate that much of the discussion on social partnership in the other House in particular revolves around salary. ….. That is the value of social partnership. The gain is shared in the good times but the pain is shared in the bad times. That is the way it must be.

A month ago I read about the irresponsible socialist commies in Aer Lingus who were going to close down the company and so on. …. They put out to ballot the extraordinary proposal of redundancies, sackings, demotions, added responsibility and more productivity. I never thought it had a chance of being accepted but it was accepted. If this country is to find its saviour and the choice was between bankers or trade unions, we would have a much better chance of survival and saving the economy with the trade unions.

I do not have time to make all the points I wanted to make but I say to the officials in the Department of Finance that there is no rush in terms of recapitalising the banks until one question can be answered. If somebody can tell me how capitalisation leads to money being loaned to the corner shops, the small builder, the carpenter or whomever, I will support it. It is not a question of what the banks would like to do. It is what they are required to do under legislation. Their shareholders want capitalisation to be increased from what was 4% or 5% to 7%, 8% or 9%. That will take billions of euro and it is of no value to the country but what it will do, if we make the mistake of doing it, is benefit the share price, at least for a while. The share price makes no difference to the Minister or to me. Those of us who held shares have lost money but that is not what we are trying to achieve.

We should recognise that it is sentiment, confidence and optimism that drive the economy, not science, mathematics or academia. The Government should shape up, look straight into the camera now and again and tell us we can get through this. That will create a wave of optimism.

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An Bord Snip – Public Sector Reform
26/11/08- For the record, I am someone who has defended the public service all my life, but that does not mean that I am opposed to public sector reform, rather I am completely and enthusiastically in favour of it. The problem is encapsulated in the example given by Senator Fitzgerald of cutting back on home-school liaison in a disadvantaged area. As far as the public is concerned, that is grand in that it is a cut in public service. That is how it will be interpreted by the media, even though everyone who looks at it will know it is a bad idea.

Overspend is as bad as underspend. Underspend is as bad as overspend. My problem with setting up “Bord Snip” is different from that of other people. My difficulty with it is that it will simply look at budgets and cut back. We need cross-cutting in this regard. For example, I have raised here on numerous occasions the whole question of the building section of the Department of Education and Science. It has caused hassle in every community that is waiting for schools, not knowing how matters will work out. I do not understand why schools are not built by local authorities. I have never seen a county development plan to which the planning section of the Department of Education and Science has made a contribution.

In places such as Balbriggan, for instance, many houses have been built but there is no school. Nobody asked why that is the case. Savings could be made if local authorities built schools, because they are in touch with local needs. They are guardians of the county development plan and they will know what other public buildings are needed. If a school is built, a football pitch and a public library should be built beside it which the school and the local community can use. The planning section, architects etc. can be involved in that. That is what I mean by reform, where a public sector is developed that is leading edge, competitive, productive and shows the way. That is what it was always intended to be and nobody in my position could possibly speak against that.

However, time and again we have been presented with ridiculous cutbacks which are saving money this week but we are losing out in terms of quality. The public wants better education, health and crime fighting services etc., but it also wants cutbacks in the public sector. It is difficult to have both, especially without increasing taxation. However, it will not be achieved by setting up a board that will look at merely cutting back on budgets. It can be done by cross-cutting across the public sector, seeing where one initiative might help another, without duplication and where planning is an integral part of the exercise. However, I do not believe anybody is ready to do that. I am ready to engage with that.

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Banks Recapitalisation Scheme
19/11/08 - I do not understand what is going on, nor does anybody else. Specifically, I do not understand why we are recapitalising at this time. I know what we are trying to achieve but nobody has explained to me how recapitalising the banks will send out the right message and prove things will return to operating properly. As we are all aware, the American banks and the UK banks were recapitalised but it does not seem to have made a great difference. If we are simply recapitalising so the banks carry on doing what they did before, I do not see it is an advantage to the Irish taxpayer. However, I am not saying I am right about this question because I do not know the answer.

I have been trying to check with small businesses as to how badly they are being treated by the banks. I am coming across situations where people are getting loans and mortgages and where businesses are being allowed to continue. I just do not know the facts in all of this. I know other people are in serious trouble but this is because of bad risks that were taken earlier. What exactly is the clear picture?

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Economy and Banks
18/11/08 -I am also disappointed that we are not addressing certain issues. Three weeks ago, the Leader ….. assured us that the House would discuss the economy at least once a month. Such debates are not taking place. The discussions in question are crucial. …. An opportunity needs to be provided for us to put our opinions on the record.

We need to reach an understanding of where are going with regard to the banks. Senators stayed here all night to support the Government’s initial response to the crisis. The House is surely entitled to discuss the effectiveness of this country’s approach, and the next step that will be taken, with a member of the Government. We need to understand some issues which are not in the public domain. I am not sure that capitalisation is the answer.

I would like to get some answers on this issue. I may be wrong about it. We do not have enough information to make a call on it. I do not want to recapitalise the banks if they intend to hold those moneys in store to sort out their own problems, before carrying on as they were before. I would like two things to happen. We should require this country’s banks to use the money they can draw down from the European Central Bank to fund properly risk-assessed small businesses and other entrepreneurial initiatives within the State. The banks are choking development, in effect. They are choking business at a time when money is available at EU level to be drawn down. I do not think that is good enough.

I am afraid that the recapitalisation of the banks would amount to no more than putting money into a safe in the ground, regardless of the level of equity we might get in response. It would never come out of that safe. I do not think that is how we should proceed. If money is made available to the banks from the Irish Government, rather than from Europe, for the specific purpose of oiling the economy, we should require the banks to engage in responsible and properly authorised lending. That is what needs to be done.

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Budget Measures – Agriculture and Education
23/10/08 - I would like to discuss aspects of the budget which we have not discussed in this House. We saw the people outside the gate yesterday. We need to examine the implications of the budget for education and agriculture and we should do so before these become issues which must be discussed due to the action taken by forces outside these Houses. I propose that in addition to the matter we will discuss today, we will also discuss the issue of the implications of the budget for education and agriculture and I propose an amendment to the Order of Business in this regard.

These issues have caused hurt and anger. It is not about the increase in class sizes or the lack of implementation of education measures for persons with special educational needs or the removal of special needs assistance. It is about the fact that people were working on a promise, commitments were given and expectations were raised. Now parents, management and teachers are devastated and pupils, who are the focus of it all, will suffer for all of this.

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Budget Measures
22/10/08 -I do not believe the figure given yesterday that only 20,000 over-70s will be outside the medical card eligibility net. From checking the figures for retired public servants, without even checking those from the private sector, I am convinced the figure is way above 20,000. It must be remembered on retirement many people receive lump sums, gratuities and interest on those which all add up. The true figures need to be established.

Special educational needs assistants will be cut back. The Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs Act, welcomed by all sides of this House, will not be implemented and class sizes will increase. These affect ordinary people, whether they are elderly, in the education service or on low wages.

The so-called higher paid, those pensioners who earn €35,000 a year, will now have to pay for a medical card. The Government should stop using that terminology, describing these people as higher paid. It is disgraceful and only adds to people’s feelings on the matter. They are angered, traumatised and incredulous by what they see happening.

The Government needs to reassess where it is going with this budget or else reconsider its position. It must restore confidence in its ability to govern, which is under question. It needs to listen and deal with the issues and if necessary introduce a mini-budget to deal with the unimplementable issues.

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Budget Measures
21/10/08 -I have tabled the following motion:
That Seanad Éireann strongly recommends that the Government:
—excludes the minimum wage from the proposed 1% income levy;
—reinstates in full the universal entitlement of the over 70s to a medical card; and
—reverses the budget proposal to worsen class sizes in primary and post-primary schools.

I recognise that it is not possible to take the motion at this time.

I suggest that the Order of Business be amended so that we can take statements on the three issues mentioned in my motion — the need to exclude the minimum wage from the income levy, to restore the universal entitlement of people over the age of 70 to the medical card and to reverse the proposal to reduce class sizes. We need to examine the fact that we are being misled, rightly or wrongly. I do not believe that just 20,000 people over the age of 70 earn more than €36,000 a year. That is what is suggested in a document I downloaded from the website of the Department of Finance an hour ago. I deeply resent the manner in which members of the Government have referred to people who earn €36,000 a year as “well-off” or “highly paid”.

I do not know how anybody in this House would live on €36,000 a year. There seems to be a suggestion that elderly people can live at a cheaper rate. It is not on. I would like to mention another thing that has been done in a sneaky way. The budget proposal in respect of medical cards was based on one’s net salary — one’s salary after the costs associated with housing and various other things were deducted. The new proposal in based on one’s gross income, however. Would Senators believe that this change has apparently been made — I ask my colleagues on the other side of the House to listen — because it has been decided that it is easier for people to know what their gross income is? Come on.

I ask Senators on the Government side to go back to their parliamentary parties and lift out of it those who are making proposals of this nature. Certain facts need to be checked. ….. While I fully accept the good offices of my colleagues on the other side of the House, I do not believe they are being told about what is being thought up… They were misled in the past. I ask them not to allow themselves to be misled again.

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Budget Measures
16/10/08 - The issues raised about the budget are absolutely right. I appeal to my Government colleagues. We recognise the practicalities of politics whereby they must be loyal but they should not allow the spin doctors to take over. This is a classic case of changing the words to mean something else. There is a clear difference and let them not try to convince us that a horse chestnut is the same as a chestnut horse, to use that adage. One has a head, tail and whinnies and the other does not. I ask Government Members to examine this issue. There is great anger, which will come back to haunt us.

The budget does not hang together and when the grey brigades of the over 70s together with the platoons of parents outraged at the school situation and the battalions on the minimum wage flanked by Joe Duffy’s private army emerge, the Government will be overwhelmed. This will not work.

It is reported the deal being brought forward tomorrow will allow the banks to select the people who are supposed to look after the public interest. That is an absolute abrogation of responsibility left, right and centre. We are walking into difficulties. Let us deal with it and talk honestly about it. The views of both Government and Opposition Members were the same when we discussed the banking crisis two weeks ago and they should not differ tomorrow.

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Budget Cutbacks
15/10/08 - I feel wasted. I spent one career trying to reduce class sizes and another trying to keep the minimum wage out of the tax net. In one short speech yesterday, the Minister turned on its head a large amount of good, hard, committed and energetic work done by many people over the years. It will return to haunt the Government.

There is nothing wrong with the 1% and 2% income levies. Asking people such as ourselves to pay more is fine and cannot be argued with. It is a question of the poor, the old, the lonely and the sick. People who had medical cards will no longer have them, older people will have more to worry about and younger people will be shoved into larger classes. As in the case of the Lisbon treaty, instead of dealing with an issue in a straightforward manner, the Government has created seven different oppositions in terms of the over 70s, education and so on. The fine print will return to haunt us.

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The Banking Sector “Bail Out”
07/10/08 - The Government should be well aware at this stage of the views of people from all walks of life and all sides of the political spectrum, and within Government itself, that in this situation the banks should be made pay for the commercial costs. I heard the chairman of a bank over the weekend saying it would be very unfair, having said thanks to us, if the banks were to be “crippled” with the demands we have put on them. While I would go along with that and do not want to see them crippled, I would not mind seeing them winded or dunted a bit lower down, so they had to clutch at their privates for a while. There is a mood out there to ensure they would be made feel and share the pain on this one. In simple terms, what that means is people can argue about what it would cost to insure the risk on the marketplace. They can argue about whether it would be 1%, 3% or 4%. However, we should remember it is a very easy sum to do. We are talking about a liability cover of up to €400 billion, 1% of that is €4 billion and 3% of it is three times that figure. There is a lot at stake. Surely 1% is the minimum the banks should be asked to pay over the next two years. We need to bear that in mind as we go along.

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Banking Sector
02/10/08 - I ask the Leader to consider the need for a debate on directors’ compliance statements. It is a simple requirement that directors of companies of a certain size, such as PLCs and other various listed companies, would be required to sign a statement of compliance each year stating that, as far as they are aware, they have traded fairly, have not acted recklessly, have conducted their businesses responsibly and are acting within the law. I believe — perhaps in my innocence — that would not place any greater onus on directors than has been the case heretofore.

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Credit Institutions (Financial Support) Bill
01/10/08 - I have no inhibitions in supporting this bold, courageous and necessary legislation. For the past two weeks, outrageous, unfounded and unfair criticism has been made of the Financial Regulator by Members of both Houses and commentators across the board. The Oireachtas gave the regulator the powers it wanted to give it. The Financial Regulator does not have legal power to ban products such as 100% and 110% loans because we chose not to give him the authority to take such action.

I regret we have not heard how the proposals will work. The legislation before us will not bail out the banks. I will give an example because it is the only way the issue will be understood. If a developer borrows €400 million from the banks to buy half of Ballsbridge and then goes belly up, the banks are left holding a debt of €400 million and the developer’s property in a depressed market. They must then liquidate the property, for which they will receive perhaps half the value. This means they are owed €200 million, as a result of which they must access their capitalisation. .. Irish banks’ capitalisation is stronger than that of any other national banking system in Europe because the Financial Regulator imposed on them the most intensive and stringent demands in terms of loan-to-value and capitalisation of any European country. Last year, for instance, Irish banks cried foul arguing that the stringent regime operated by the regulator placed them at a disadvantage compared to other banks.

I would like to see how we will make the banks pay for the guarantee. I share Senator Twomey’s mistrust of the banks and I do not want the legislation to operate on the basis of trust in the banks. We must have watchdogs operating in the banks as well as additional scrutiny. Their boards should be dissolved and reconstituted. An oversight body should be also established to examine perks and high salaries and an excess provision should be introduced requiring banks to pay out of their capitalisation.

.....

It is very important we make it clear that this Bill is not to guarantee losses. It is only to guarantee those losses the banks cannot meet out of their other funds, etc. We said we should do this on the basis of not trusting bankers. My only difficulty with this is that it trusts bankers. What they would do is just call it something else.

The solution to this lies in the Minister’s Department. For my sins, I chair a remuneration committee and I am a member of two other such committees. I deal with the Minister’s Department in that regard. I would be very happy if the same scrutiny were put in place through a remuneration committee established by the Minister’s Department. The Department already has one which includes the Secretaries General of the Departments of the Taoiseach and Finance. It must go through a parent Department and must have a clear set of objectives for the year, a twice yearly review of progress, an assessment and key performance indicators. On that basis, a package is agreed.

Is the Minister prepared to insist that the same level of scrutiny, assessment, monitoring and measurement of performance indicators is put in place for the chief executives of these institutions as it is for other bodies with which he deals?

………….. In these Houses we have consistently restricted the functions and powers of the regulatory authorities — all of them — because we have never liked to “interfere with the market”, as the term is used. I have lost many arguments on this issue over the past 20 years. ….It is crucial that all the authorities work together. My understanding is that the regulatory authorities have indicated they are quite willing to take on additional scrutiny on the Minister’s behalf, under the terms specified by him. People should recognise that, for instance, the regulatory authorities have required the banks to have additional capitalisation to deal with speculation and so on. The regulatory authorities have, for instance, defined speculation for banking terms. ….. There are issues such as this and I want to add a question. The eighth or ninth directive from Europe on common audit standards in the European Community still has not been transposed by the Government. There are issues of quality assurance attached to that. It is very important to recognise that the Government should move swiftly on that. This would clarify the points raised by Senator Burke and ensure the role of the Minister has some checks and balances attaching to it by accommodating the European common audit standards.


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The Economy and the Banking Sector
01/10/08 - One matter about which we know more now than previously is that the banks found it easier and cheaper to get credit yesterday. The Minister of State …. said the banks would be forced to pay a reasonable charge. To me the charge is clear; it is the difference between what the banks were paying for money yesterday and what they were paying for it the previous day or what they are paying for it today. That is the value they have got. That is the value the taxpayer has given them and the value they need to pay back to us for our covering their risk and liability and for allowing them to do their business and to trade in a way they were not able to a week or three days ago. We should be insistent on that approach.

One issue not mentioned by the Government but raised by Fine Gael is the question of having a State representative on the banks’ risks or credit committees. I agree with that idea, but I also believe other people should be represented on the banks’ boards. The boards should be dissolved and reformed to deal with this and taxpayers should be represented. That seems an obvious requirement.

An issue raised here time and again and by those involved in the regulatory area is that the power of the Financial Regulator needs to be strengthened. I argued in this House nearly ten years ago for authority to be given for the free flow of information between the Office of the Revenue Commissioners, the financial authority and the offices of the other regulators in the State. There was major objection to that proposal in this Chamber and a watered-down version of the legislative measure was eventually passed. We are now talking about why the Financial Regulator is not doing his business.

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The Economy and the Banking Sector
30/09/08 - I wanted to hear him (Minister of State, Deputy Mansergh) say the Government had come to a conclusion that was announced at 6.50 this morning and to outline how it came to it. He should have outlined the options it explored and possible alternatives. All I wanted was the opportunity to buy into it. I am still listening to hear that and I hope I will hear it later this evening. …. This is a creative and progressive proposal. I cannot say whether it will work. However, I certainly welcome it as being mould breaking. … no other economy in the world has made such a proposal. In terms of the general principle, I want it to work and I hope it will work.

The message today is that the banks have let us down. The free market just did not work. The free market has failed miserably. That does not necessarily mean the market fails. It is the free aspect, the unregulated unrestrained greed that drove it that has been the problem. It is a question of how we should regulate it. Towards the end of his speech the Minister of State said we needed to protect “without being overpowering” which is the key. It is light-touch regulating but it must go right into the heart of the matter.

Representatives of the banks appeared before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service a few months ago and assured us. However, they are not to be believed. The Government needs to be absolutely sceptical of anything it hears from the bankers. These are the people who gave 110% loans to mortgage applicants and increased borrowers’ credit limits. …..The Minister of State and I both spoke in a debate here a few years ago when the banks proposed a daft idea of inviting people to convert their mortgage accounts into current accounts in order that they could use them to extend their debt. That was an appalling thing to do. We need to remember this is exactly what they did to the farmers in the 1970s. They shovelled out money to them to build milking parlours and other things they did not need. When credit became tighter they threatened to take their land and took them to court. The same thing is happening all over again. It comes around and goes around. It is always will be cyclical.

I begrudge every cent to the bankers. It is crucial that the decision of the Government should not be seen as a bank-rolling of the banks and of the bankers. The economy is the people, it is nothing else. My first lecture in economics said the economy was well-educated healthy people. That is why the point has been made by Senator Healy Eames and others not to pull on support for education and health. The economy is the ordinary person, the small shopkeeper, the farmer, the small contractor and people who can only operate if they can access credit. If the Government’s thinking behind this morning’s move is to ensure that Irish banks can drawdown credit then that makes sense for them do it.

The Government needs to call for a dissolution of the boards, re-establish them and put back on them the good people. We need to ensure that all bonuses, directors’ perks and €1 million salaries per year are done away with immediately and the level of due diligence and oversight of the way the banks do their business is made clear.

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The Economy
30/09/08 - The House may not be aware of who David Doyle is, but he is Secretary General of the Department of Finance. He and his officials and officials involved from other Departments deserve our congratulations for coming up with a proposal that is unique, creative and deals with an issue we must address. We need all the detail on this and for that reason I support and second Senator Fitzgerald’s proposal that we have a question and answer session on it. This is not something that should just develop into an argument over and back across the floor of this House. We need information. When the bankers were in the counting houses and those in the private sector sat on their hands, we saw how useless they were at dealing with a problem outside of that realm. For that reason, we should always recognise the importance of the public sector.

I do not welcome this development out of support for bankers. As far as I am concerned, they should take much of the responsibility for the difficulty in which we find ourselves. They are the people who invented sub-prime lending, handed out 110% loans way above the value of property, increased limits on credit cards without being asked and who urged youngsters to change their mortgage accounts into current accounts and use them to go on holidays, buy cars, extend their houses or whatever. They deserve to pay the price now. I do not welcome this initiative as in any sense a threat to the taxpayer nor as being a support for bankers. The bankers are now on their knees screaming and we should do unto them as they did unto us over the years.

I want to hear from Government today how it will make the banks pay for this. We should get a full list of how it will charge them. I want to hear there will be a surcharge and levy on bank profits and what the charge will be for insurance cover. I want to hear there will be no more million euro salaries and that directors’ bonuses and perks will be taken off the agenda. I want to hear that the State has seats on the boards of all the institutions mentioned today. That is the starting position. We need to move through that list, but more than anything, we need oversight on how these people do their business.

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The Economy
02/07/08 - I listened to members of the Government in 1987 telling us how bad the country was, that it was going to the wall and that there was not a shilling in it. It took a couple of hundred million pounds worth of tribunals over the following 20 years to find that the country was overwhelmed and rotten with money at the time, most of it going offshore and most of it being accumulated without tax having been paid on it.

We need to discuss the matter. .. people need to understand why we need the facts before us this time. I agree we need to share the pain. We should have a view that anybody who speaks in this House should propose a solution that covers everybody. Income and wage restraint are fine. However, we need to remember that is called profit for some people, wages and income for others, and all sorts of fees for others again. We should look to the people who got us into this mess, the bankers and the builders. There should be an extra tax on bankers who are still making €1.7 billion profit this year. We should consider a means to protect people at the lower end on the minimum wage to ensure those outside the tax net are not brought inside it. Everybody would be prepared to consider the introduction of taxation for people earning more than €100,000 a year — or whatever figure. I am sure the trade union movement will not be found wanting in supporting that kind of progressive programme.

In any discussion we have on the matter there should be an objective. Why would people have a pay pause? Why would we share the pain? What are we trying to achieve? What we are trying to achieve can be articulated, quantified or measured by benchmarks through interest rates, economic growth or inflation. People would then know when we reach that point we have achieved the target and then the pain can be relieved. People need to be clear about the state we are in at present, what we need to do to achieve our target in a way that will be shared by everybody and how we will know when we are out of it. We have none of that information at the moment. We should not buy into listening to bankers’ economists telling us how bad things are. They are the people who told us how good things were not that long ago and guided us into this mess in the first place.

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The Economy
01/07/08 - I wish to raise another matter, which has been raised on two or three occasions previously, the question of the economy, competitiveness and wages. It is interesting to stress again a point I have made many times. The issue in question is not only about salaries, pay pauses and all that goes with that. What we set out to do was to ensure that people shared the wealth of this country. The point is often made that salaries and labour costs are the problem. I will leave the House with one piece of information; the best paid workers in Europe are in the Scandinavian countries, in Finland, Sweden and the other Nordic countries. Their economies are also the most competitive. That is the question the Government must answer and the one with which we must deal when we talk about examining saving public funds. I look forward to a fuller debate on this issue. Senator Fitzgerald’s proposal to have a debate on the economy is crucially important.

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Economic Situation
18/06/08 - It would be an absolute disaster if the debate on the Lisbon treaty were to overshadow the extraordinary economic difficulties we are facing at present. I ask the Leader to allocate a full day as soon as possible to discuss the economy. The issues concern not only cutbacks but all aspects of the economy. I would like if the Minister for Finance or the Taoiseach were to come into the House and tell us how bad or how good is the situation and outline what course of action can be taken. Let us hear it and let us make decisions, particularly for those of us who are neither in Government nor members of the Opposition. We want to be in a position where we have all the information and can recognise and evaluate proposals and decisions. That is crucially important.

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National Development Plan
29/05/08 - Members must look seriously at where the country is going. The real test of a government is its performance when matters are going badly. Problems will be created if the Government begins to pull back from the national development plan. We must continue to build infrastructure to enable us get out of any recession and the national development plan should be given support.

If aspects of the plan require reconsideration, this should be done in a proper way. The national pay talks and partnership talks were set up to do so as they were born out of bad times in 1987. At a time when people are sitting around the table, they should be obliged to listen to the problems that have arisen. The Government should outline its problems, the other participants should do likewise and people should be obliged to listen to one another. I will outline what should not happen. Members may have heard a funny piece on “Morning Ireland” this morning when a representative from the Small Firms Association made an impassioned appeal in respect of the national development plan. He advocated reforming and cutting back on the public services and suggested that money should not be spent on various aspects of it. He suggested everyone else should be obliged to cut back and the Government should not spend money and should pull back on everything. He then was asked what the members of the Small Firms Association intended to do. Without a trace of irony and without drawing a second breath, he replied they would continue to do what they always did.

Such an attitude will destroy this country. Everyone should get stuck in to do his or her bit, the Small Firms Association included. Everyone must listen to and share their problems to find a common solution. National partnership talks are the ideal place in which to so do.

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Public Private Partnerships
21/05/08 - I refer to the issue of public private partnerships, which I have defended and proposed on many occasions. I have looked for details regarding the regeneration projects in Dublin but cannot find any. I ask the Leader to provide Members with information or invite the appropriate Minister to the House. My understanding is that decisions on public private partnerships are in the gift of the National Treasury Management Agency, NTMA. The idea was that the NTMA would examine any proposal from all points of view.

What is the nature of a contract that allows a party to walk away from it seven or eight months later without the imposition of any penalty clauses? We went through this process a few years ago with the cost of roads and it was sorted out by the insertion of clear timelines and penalty clauses. I am not making any accusation until I have the information, but we are entitled to know what the NTMA put into the contract for this development, the penalty clauses and timelines and whether the people involved are right or wrong. We can have a discussion when we have the facts. It certainly raises extraordinary questions.


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Protection of Employees (Agency Workers) (No. 2) Bill 2008
12/03/08 - The legislation is very simple. .. This is a one-principle Bill in that all it is calling for is equal pay for equal work. There is no complexity attaching to it.

The practices that are taking place are purely exploitative. Agency workers are being taken on and used. .. I can assure the House that this legislation would help social partnership. Would we be prepared to wait for consensus on social partnership? It is a bit like considering how we dealt with issues in the past. We must determine what we are talking about. We are talking about people in bondage, who are tied in a bond in a country far from home. They are transported, and almost trafficked, to Ireland and put into tied work where they are used and abused. This used to happen in the past and it was called slavery. How long would we have waited if President Abraham Lincoln had been told to hang on for consensus in the south of the USA and they would surely get rid of slavery in a short time? This is not an issue of consensus; this is an issue of right and wrong. I want to hear just one person tell me why it is right for two people doing the same job to be paid different amounts of money.

It is a simple question. People will then state that we will get them to work for nothing or for half nothing so that we can be competitive. They will end up telling me that that is right and that is the basis on which we build our economy.
Members on all sides of the House fought for 40 years to ensure we were fair and protected people in employment. There were 100,000 people on the streets of Ireland less than two years ago when they saw what was happening in Irish Ferries. People did not like it. It did not meet the vision Irish people have of themselves. It was not right that people were recruited into bonded employment on the ships and paid pence to do work which should have attracted greater money.

It is not complex and anyone who tries to introduce complexity into this argument is not examining the reality as we look at it. It is a matter of equal pay for equal work, of protecting, giving dignity to and respecting people.

I do not want to live in a country where we bring people in from abroad, employ them in factories and keep them tied to there, such as we have heard. A Member cited the example of Pakistani workers in a restaurant who were being paid €50 a month. Mushroom pickers in another part of Ireland were found to be spending almost their entire wages on their substandard accommodation. This is not a correct image of modern Ireland. This is not what the Celtic tiger was about. This is not why we tightened our belts in 1987, 1990 and 1995. This is not the vision we had. The vision we should have is of a place where people do their best and are rewarded for it. It is a place where we have allowed market forces to develop.

The other aspect of this is that if an Irish worker cannot get a job because an agency worker has been employed at half the price of the Irish worker, that feeds xenophobia. Irish workers ask whether such people are taking their jobs. These people do not even know whose job has been taken. They have arrived looking for work, have been employed and, suddenly, are objects of hate and the focus of attention, The result is a growth in the level of xenophobia. We cannot allow that to happen.

There is no basis for doing anything other than accepting the principles in this legislation. It cannot be right to do otherwise. The only question we must ask ourselves is what is right in this situation. What is right is either to accept this Bill, introduce something similar or deal with the issues in it. There is no way other than the right one on this matter.

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Company Directors
12/03/08 - The Director of Corporate Enforcement, Paul Appleby, has raised again the difficulty he is having in implementing our legislation requiring that we deal with directors who, for various reasons, have acted recklessly. I refer to people who, for some reason, have been found by the courts not to be fit persons for the office of director. Mr. Appleby feels he has not the authority to implement the legislation. … The easiest way to deal with this matter is to ask the Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy John McGuinness, who deals with this area and who has recently discussed regulation in the House, to indicate the needs in this area and explain how the legislation works, if it is workable, such that we can be sure that those acting as directors are fit to do so. He should state whether the legislation needs to be changed.

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National Competitiveness
26/02/08 - Will the Leader consider arranging a debate on the annual report of the National Competitiveness Council? I requested on a prior occasion that we debate the report because it brings to light certain issues. At this time of the year, when people are involved in negotiations relating to national wage agreements, there is much discussion regarding labour costs, etc. The report to which I refer is an eye-opener in the context of what really costs in this country. If one examines the areas in which unit costs are highest in international terms, one can see that it is not a matter of labour costs because we can supply labour quite cheaply.

It is interesting but hardly surprising that the report indicates that the two highest unit costs in Ireland are the cost per hour for the services of a lawyer and the cost of mobile telephone calls. When put in the context of all the discussions we have had over the years about rationalising telecoms and selling off Eircom to make it more competitive and allow for cheaper prices, it is a joke that we are now the highest in the world in terms of the costs of mobile calls for people setting up business here. We are also the second highest in international comparisons in terms of the cost of water and waste. It is important that we make known our views on these issues and are aware of items and services that are expensive.

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Credit Union Savings Protection
03/10/07 - In the spring of this year, the Independent Senators introduced a motion on credit union savings to achieve a guarantee of savings protection and a system that would be independent of all representative bodies and others. There was a long debate in the House and at its conclusion the Government Members did not disagree with my proposal that savings in credit unions should have exactly the same level of protection and guarantee as those in a bank. They said Government representatives were in talks with the Irish League of Credit Unions in conjunction with the Financial Regulator and they intended to conclude them by 31 March, after which they would move on the issues.

The Government has not been as good as its word on this issue and we therefore need to address it. I have a duty to introduce my Bill. I do not mind if the Financial Regulator or Minister for Finance say clearly they disagree with what I propose but I know my proposal is correct. I am getting telephone calls from all sorts of people who are afraid to speak out and do not want to rock the boat. I am afraid we will see a run on credit unions such as we saw in respect of Northern Rock. If there is a lack of confidence, this is what will happen. Will the Leader ask the Minister for Finance to address the issue?

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Finance Bill 2007 – Stamp Duty Change and Housing
03/07/07 - I received a heartfelt letter from a Mr. Ciarán Doyle — I am sure he sent a copy of it to the Minister — which states: “I listened to Minister Brian Cowen in his budget speech and I believed him and I acted on that basis.” I believe the Minister was telling the truth at the time. I am not for one moment suggesting he misled the House. On that basis he and his partner did a deal on a house in January and concluded it in the middle of March, thereby missing out on €25,000 by two weeks. Such things happen.

However, this man and his partner acted on the Minister’s statement. No matter what date is set on any issue, there will always be somebody on the wrong side of the line. This issue is slightly different in that the people in question acted on the basis of what the Minister said and on the basis of the budget. ….. It is an important issue for the Minister. I know he would consider it to be so. The man in question and his partner will be paying the guts of €2,000 per month on their house for the next 30 or 35 years and €25,000 would mean a lot to them. I ask the Minister, therefore, to consider what I propose in the amendment I have tabled for the next Stage, which is also included in some of the other amendments, and to backdate this measure to 1 January, the beginning of the tax year, in line with his, the Minister’s, commitment. It is not unfair to ask this.

I was the only Member who argued some years ago that the first-time buyer’s grant did nothing for first-time buyers. I did not join in the general chorus when the grant was changed.

The Minister claims the buyer will buy to his or her ability. In other words, he or she will examine the overall cost of the house, the purchase price and taxes. He also made the point that the abolition of stamp duty will not necessarily reduce the price of a house as it is factored into it. That is a fair argument. Anyone purchasing a house would factor in the stamp duty when seeking funds.

The Minister compared house prices from last year to this year but did not factor in the differences made with the removal of stamp duty. … Applying the Minister’s argument that people will spend what they can afford, the stamp duty factor must be considered in making a real-time adjustment in house prices between this and last year.

Will the Minister consider the supply and demand and population factor? What is happening in the private rental market is similar to what happened prior to achieving 80,000 housing units being built annually. Before that, rents were higher than they are currently. The price of apartment rentals in Dublin was higher in 2001 than at present. Within the past seven to eight months rentals have again approached that level.

I should like to hear the Minister’s views on this, but I do not believe the housing market will collapse. It cannot collapse. I am looking at an increased population, higher rental costs and a reduction from 80,000 houses per year to what the banks suggest will be around 55,000 or 60,000. I agree with the Minister that the market cannot collapse on that basis.
However, the point made …. about our over-reliance on construction .. is an enormous fear and I should like to hear more from the Minister on how this may be counteracted. As he said, the proportion of GDP or GNP dependent on construction is far in excess of what we would be comfortable. We need to hear about plans beyond that.

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Building Societies Bill
06/07/06 - While this is important legislation, I must say I find it very depressing and discouraging. It is clear that market forces are at work and this is inevitable. The Minister of State had no choice but to move forward and deal with the issues being dealt with in this Bill. I wish it were not so. I am committed to the concept of mutual societies and I regret their demise but the fact is this is happening. That is the way the market is moving and the way we must follow in this respect.

However, it is important to recognise what is involved when we talk about, to use the word used by the Minister of State,“conversion” or demutualisation. In a mutual society, the society and its assets are owned by the members. These are the members who have a loan from the society. Following the conversion to a public limited company, the company is then owned by the shareholders. The shareholders must get their dividend and profit. They get that by squeezing the mortgagees. In other words, they must put pressure on the people who are repaying their mortgages not only to run the company but to create a profit for the shareholders. Therefore, there is an extra tier of costs which is loaded on to the process and which must be paid for by the mortgage holder. That means we are moving away from the concept of people looking after each other in the buying of houses. It is one further step to make life more difficult for people who are trying to cope with paying for the cost of buying a house. In that sense, it is tragic.

I listened recently to comments by the Educational Building Society on this proposal. They were that the society was delighted about this legislation and that it would give it added protection. I have read through the Bill and do not see where there is any such added protection in it. Nothing has changed. It was never the position that people could walk into the AGM of a building society and bring a motion that the society would be demutualised and get it passed.
People should recognise that there is no added support for mutualisation in this legislation. It does not make life any worse for those societies who wish to remain as mutuals and that is a good thing. Neither does it in any way make it less likely that they will demutualise. That is the case.

I have always had a keen interest in it (the EBS) and closely followed its progress. I have admired the way it managed its business and the way it is trying to maintain mutuality, but I do not believe that it will succeed. Market forces will overwhelm building societies eventually and they will move in that direction.

I am disappointed this legislation is before us. I wish we did not need to have it.

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Credit Cards
03/07/06 - It is the view of some commentators throughout Europe that countries should introduce legislation to restrict the number of credit cards a person can hold and to require banks and other financial institutions to check on the number of credit cards held by a person before issuing a new one. In addition, such legislation would stipulate that in order to move beyond the limit and acquire an additional card, a person must cancel an existing card.

Current arrangements regarding credit cards are anti-competitive and run contrary to the rules and tenets of the Treaty of Rome and the European movement. Due to the current anti-competitive franchising arrangements, a person can only acquire a credit card in his or her own country. This state of affairs is ridiculous given the existence of a common European market. These arrangements are both anti-competitive and dangerous.

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National Economic and Social Development Office Bill
04/05/06 - We need to give a clear guideline as to what goes on in the partnership talks. In every partnership discussion going back to 1987 — I was involved in every one — we would begin with the most recent report from the NESF and NESC and on that would build the partnership process. That is how important these organisations are. They are not prescriptive but they outline the situation. Issues are agreed in principle, then they are fleshed out in negotiation.

We must be competitive. When one hears a discussion on competitiveness, it almost always boils down to how much workers are being paid, which is only one small part of the issue. The job of the trade union side has been to say it is not only that and that it is about profits, etc.

When we create the wealth, we must decide what to do with it, which is the crucial part. We have grown the wealth of the country by 5% this year, so what should we do with it and who should get it? How difficult is that? The longer one spends thinking about it, the more difficult it gets but one can begin with the top-line issues. Some of that money will have to be reinvested in industry or in whatever is creating wealth and in research and development to ensure our industries develop and more wealth is created. If we do not do that, we will have no future. That is crucial for the following reason. We will no longer make widgets or have huge manufacturing industries. Any add-on value we create will come from intelligence — intellectual add-on and investment. That is why we need research and development in new products, new markets, new industry and new services. If that is not done, we will have no future.

The Government uses tax revenue to run the country and look after people, including some of those who have taken a profit because they still send their children to school, avail of the health service, drive on the roads, use the airports, etc. These are real issues and as soon as we bring them together, we recognise that is what social partnership is about.

Social partnership is important because if we did not have it, we would have a comfortable situation where people would not go outside their own tents. The trade unions would never have to eyeball or do face time with those on the other side of the argument. If the social partners did not have to deal with each other, they would never have to hear the arguments of those on the other side. If those on the business side did not have to argue their point or listen to the other side, life would become very easy.

In all of that, we try to raise the boats of all groups. However, we have failed to look after people who need more help because this has become a competitive and survivalist society. Recently I listened to a French person living here whose view was that this is a great country in which to live if one is healthy, doing well and working in a good job but that it is a difficult one in which to live if one needs support or help. That is why we must welcome this legislation.

This legislation copper-fastens much of the basis for the above, which is why I commend it. It is the way forward. Even if there is no partnership agreement, there will always be partnership. If there is no partnership, we would spend our time pulling each other apart. For many years, we have had the best industrial relations record in Europe. No country has had fewer strikes. In fact, public service strikes are almost unheard of in Ireland these days compared with what we have seen in France, Belgium, Italy and Germany in the past year where there have been strikes over pensions, public services, investment and labour law, issues which are dealt with in partnership negotiations here and, as consequence, it is a boost for the economy. This legislation is important as it gives a statutory basis to the various bodies.


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National Pensions Reserve Fund
03/05/06 - On a number of occasions I have supported fundamentally the establishment of the National Pensions Reserve Fund. It is the essence of good politics to take a decision that will not bear fruit for more than 20 years because it means there is nothing in it for the person taking the decision. I also believe that the Government since then has been right to ensure that nobody could get their fingers into the trough of the National Pensions Reserve Fund.

It is worthwhile reminding ourselves what exactly has emerged from the National Pensions Reserve Fund. During the first quarter of this year it showed a return of 5.4%. More importantly, it showed a return last year of 20%, which is great. It is also important to recognise that in 2002-03 when equities fared badly and the fund did not do well that politicians from all sides, including Senator Ross, were the first to say that this was not astute management. I welcome the opportunity of putting on the record that the kind of management that has taken place under the aegis of the National Pensions Reserve Fund has been very good in terms of its objective, which is to have 9% in small cap equities and in private equity over the next four or five years. This is most shrewd.

Senator Ross referred to far higher returns than the National Pensions Reserve Fund has achieved but it would be helpful if he made the comparison with pension fund management as opposed to equity fund management and the kind of approach that must be taken. The fact that the National Pensions Reserve Fund people have managed to get a 6% compound increase over the past four or five years is something on which it should be complimented.

Another point that has not been made is that when this fund was established in the first place there was a concern about the problem of paying for our pensions from the year 2020 onwards and that because there would be so few people working to support those people who would no longer be working this would cause a major problem for the future. One significant thing has happened since then, that is, thankfully, that there has been a huge influx of immigrants to this country in order to ensure the growth of our economy and to pay our pensions in the future. Every time we hear it said in debate that people are coming to this country and supposedly taking Irish people’s jobs, even though they are jobs Irish people do not want to do, we should point out that this is how our pension will be paid. What is happening is that this is securing our future.

The other thing we need to say which is not something the Department of Finance is inclined to say, but it is worth saying, is that even in 2000 or 2001 when we established this fund and when we were worried about our exposure and liability in the future we had a lesser pro rata exposure than, for instance, Italy or Germany and they have not taken anything like these measures. We have been far more astute in dealing with that problem and at the same time our problem has eased so it is fair to say we have made significant progress.

The point the Minister made in his contribution is one which we need to examine and which is not understood by too many people — that people paying their stamps will have their basic social welfare pension and when we talk about having an obligatory pension that it is building on top of that. We should say to people that by paying their PRSI, people will develop an entitlement to the social welfare fund but that will not be enough to look after them. If one wants the level of comfort to which one is used, one must also make a commitment to a private investment. That is the future.

We should put some simple facts to the public when we talk about this matter in future. First, our investment is a good idea and that it is properly and responsibly managed. Second, when we ask people to invest in pensions in future we should stress that it is to give them a level of comfort which they will not otherwise have. They are doing it for themselves. Third, it does not take from the social welfare pension which would still be available. Fourth, that putting all one’s eggs in one basket is what one does if one invests in property instead of in a pension fund. That is exactly what is wrong with it.


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Finance Bill 2006
28/03/06 - I congratulate the Minister on the budget. I particularly welcome the move he made on an issue I raised with him last year, namely, the importance of taking the minimum wage out of the tax net — it was done — and on the issue of child care, which I also raised with him. I recognise the advances that have been made in those two difficult areas. There are many other aspects of the Bill on which I could dwell but it is moving in the right direction. There are areas in which I would like to see more advances. There are aspects with which I am not completely happy and there are suggestions I would like the Minister to take on board.

The proposal the Arts Council made to the Minister to extend the artists’ exemption scheme to other areas like choreography should be done. That is something that might be examined.

I know what the Minister’s officials will say when I talk about VAT exemption on certain issues. They will say we hear this every year in respect of education and so on but the question of VAT exemption on supply of goods or expertise to non-profit making events of an artistic nature, which have been so defined, should also be included and I ask the Minister to examine that.

In my contribution to the debate on last year’s Finance Bill I asked the reason we could not get back to the issue of grants for eco-friendly changes to houses. I refer here to micro-generators, wind and water generators, solar panels, geothermal heating and so on. I express my appreciation for the announcement made this year on that issue, which is a progressive step.

The biggest issues we are facing currently are eco-environmental issues. They are issues of dependency on oil and the problem of waste and wasted energy. I end my contribution with this thought. I did some research on this area and looked at west Kerry as an example. The energy needs of all of west Kerry could be catered for with three 1.5 MW output wind generators. They would cater for everything and put something into the grid. Similarly, west Kerry could deal with all its waste. If any community is prepared to look after all its waste and energy needs and feed more back into the grid, those communities should get some reward in the form of a tax break for doing so. It is an opportunity to do something creative and progressive. All politics is local and every time there is a proposal, whether it is for an incinerator, a wind energy project or whatever, an objection is made but let people buy into this idea. Give them control and responsibility for their own environment and let us look at doing something creative. I ask the Minister to consider that for next year’s budget.

Significant advances in micro-generation have been made. When I was first elected to this House, everyone, including me, thought that we had more or less reached the limit in terms of hydroelectric energy. Now, with the advances in micro-generators, that is no longer the case and smaller rivers and areas can also be developed. However, this would probably require a tax break.

I regard the Minister’s proposals to lift excise duties on various forms of biofuels to be positive and progressive. I have spoken to people involved in the industry to inquire why more people and farmers have not become involved in it. The explanation was simple and pertained to a lack of certainty. People require a fixed timescale and someone must state that it is planned to hold the excise duties in this fashion for the next ten years, in order that people can enter the industry at agricultural, supply and product levels.

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Decentralisation
21/03/06 - I supported the proposals on decentralisation provided they would be done on a voluntary basis. It will undermine the process of decentralisation if we reach a position where a person’s career prospects will grind to a halt by virtue of what is being proposed. It is unfair to say to a person that he or she can be promoted provided the person is prepared to sell his or her house, take his or her children out of school, incur expense in various ways and move to a different location in order to continue his or her career.

That is wrong because people had clear and understandable expectations about how decentralisation would proceed. Any other group of workers, including Members of this House, might react in the same manner if someone was to unnecessarily pull the rug from under them.

This issue should be debated soon. I understand that 13% of the decentralisation programme has been carried out, which is satisfactory progress. From the outset it was ridiculous to think that decentralisation could be implemented in three years. It will take seven or eight years to implement the programme at the best of times. Decentralisation can work and is progressing but will be undermined if people are compelled to decentralise.

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Social Partnership
07/02/06 - The most important aspect of social partnership is that it has delivered. It is worthwhile reminding ourselves, particularly at a time when people criticise society and what we have achieved, of where we were in 1987 before this process began. In 1987, we had a debt to GNP ratio of 150%, emigration was running at 40,000 a year, there were no jobs for people here and approximately 18% were unemployed. People were struggling with mortgage interest rates of between 14% and 15% at a time when inflation figures were astronomical, sometimes in the high single figures, and strikes were running at something like one day per year for every three workers, which is now one day per year for one in every 20 workers. There is no comparison.

Within an economy there must be a beginning and an end. The beginning is the creation of wealth and the end is the sharing of the wealth. How can we do that in a fair way? What is the rule or the formula? How do we move it forward? That is what social partnership is about.

We must look to the common good where the entrepreneur, the banker and the marketeer will get their share, as will the people in our society who are dependent and in poverty and who need support. Finding that balance is what social partnership is about; it is not rocket science. It is a question of looking at people who cannot get houses or jobs and looking at those who have houses and jobs and marrying them together in a fair and equitable fashion. That is what social partnership is about and it is no more than that.

What happens in social partnership is a model people talk about time and again, namely, real consultation. Along one side of it sit the industrialists and the business people. Along another side sit the members of the farming community. The labour and trade union representatives sit along another side and the voluntary and community groups sit on another side. They are the people who work for nothing in many cases and who support those who need help. They do everything from dealing with people with disability or special needs to problems of poverty, housing, unemployment, etc.

All those people sit around the table and the Government representatives listen to them but the crucial point that is always missed is that the others have to listen to each other also. They are forced to listen. It is a civic forum where people are forced to listen and engage in argument with those who have a completely different point of view. That is what we need to do. It is then about fairness and how we move that on.

It is also a process about forcing people to sign in blood on the bottom line and to stick with the agreement. Every time I hear politicians talking about not being involved in the social partnership discussions I reflect on how lucky they are. The day one engages is the day one has to stick with what is agreed and that would not suit too many politicians who would have signed up to defend the downsides as well as the upsides to an agreement. If one has not signed up to something, it is much easier to come into this House to express total opposition to benchmarking. Nonetheless, quite happy to accept it.

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Seanad debates are available in full on the Oireachtas Website