Barrett proposes Bill on ‘proper supervision’ of banking sector

Independent Seán D Barrett called for proper supervision of the banking sector.

Mr Barrett thanked Minister of State for Finance Brian Hayes for accepting his Private Members’ Bill, the Financial Stability and Reform Bill, against the advice of his civil servants.

“We need to reform banking, to increase the capital of the banks, to move to equity and to separate utility banking from casinos,’’ he added.

He said Ireland should not be relying on Europe because it was not a problem in Europe. “Germany has spent about 3 per cent of GDP bailing out banks, while we have spent almost 60 per cent doing so,’’ he added. “This is our problem and it must be solved here.’’

Mr Barrett said Ireland must reverse the way supervision was removed from the banks. “They have been insulting members of this parliament and this entire society for a long time,’’ he said. “The banking system must be properly supervised to ensure that those problems do not recur.’’

Paul Coghlan (FG) said there was support for what Mr Barrett was proposing and that was the direction in which the Government was going. “This has to be done in an orderly fashion,’’ he added.

Aideen Hayden (Lab) congratulated Mr Barrett on his Bill, adding that she was on record on a number of occasions as saying that the current banking system was not fit for purpose. “We can point to a number of examples, including interest rates and bankers’ remuneration,’’ she added.

On the abortion controversy, Susan O’Keeffe (Lab) said she welcomed the formation of a ministerial working group to tease out the difficulties surrounding the legislation. She said everybody wanted sensible and workable legislation which was rooted in the expert group’s report published before Christmas.

Ms O’Keeffe said that rather than “rachet up the shouting, we should try to approach this in the calm and measured way that an issue such as this deserves’’.

She added that the legislation was extremely important and the stakes too high “for people to be screaming and gossiping about what is happening’’.