FG leader calls for a new bank to fund businesses

Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny would take back bonuses from senior personnel working in banks seeking State aid.

This would be done by securing possession of personal properties and or attachments to future pension entitlements, he told members of the London Business Society yesterday.

FG in power would ensure that there would be nowhere to hide for Irish bankers who played dice with the solvency and sovereignty of the State.

He also called for the setting up of a National Recovery Bank. Its brief would be to make credit available to businesses.

The proposed bank would get repayable funding from the European Central Bank (ECB) and international markets. The money would be distributed through branch networks of existing banks.

He also said that he would regard anything less than a 40% average write-down on the book value of the loans to be purchased by the National Management Asset Agency (Nama) as nothing short of outright theft from the State.

He also said no further taxpayers’ money should be invested in any of the banks until a new deal was reached between the banks and their own investors and unsecured bondholders. They should be the first to absorb any future losses.

He believed Fine Gael’s proposition of splitting those banks at greatest risk of insolvency into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ parts might yet emerge as the best way to protect taxpayer interests and to establish clean, well capitalised banks with an appetite to lend.

He also called for a ‘truly open parliamentary-led inquiry into what went wrong’.

The terms of reference announced by the Government for its own probe smacked of insider whitewash.

If elected Taoiseach, he would open up the files in the Department of Finance, the Central Bank and the Financial Regulator to full parliamentary scrutiny and investigation.

Article courtesy of the Evening Echo newspaper.