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Seanad
‹ Order of Business

Property tax and banking power

Summary

Senator O'Donnell said she does not know what her property tax pays for and wants the Minister to explain it. She then raised banking concentration, vulture funds and the loss of bank ownership and rights, and briefly clashed with Senator McDowell over Ballymun and community regeneration.

I received my property tax bill recently. I pay it in one go rather than monthly. I would like the Leader to bring the Minister in to tell me what exactly I am paying for. I do not know. Am I paying for leaves, filth, roads, stuffed drains, graffiti and cars parked on foot paths? What am I paying for? I do not know what I am paying for. I want him to come to the House and tell me what I am paying this money for.

I have watched the situation with the banks. I wrote about them in 2009. One thing that is not being raised is how in Ireland we have no competition for our banks, 95% of them are commercial, whereas in Germany only 14% are commercial, the majority are either social or community banking. We do not have that. There is no competition yet we have possible collusion.

What has happened to the Bank of Scotland, Ireland-----

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Vulture funds.

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-----which left this island? It left this island with the deeds of my house and has not been seen since. When I attempted to contact the bank, I learned it was now owned by Pepper, the vulture fund. This is another investigation that is coming down the line. We have nobody to talk to, we do not know our legal rights, we do not know what we signed or did not sign and it was just taken from us. I am delighted that the Government is doing what it is doing about tracker mortgages but there is another problem ahead. Bank of Scotland, Ireland, no longer operates on this island and it has taken our deeds and none of us knows where they are or where to find them.

I remind Senator McDowell who spoke of low-hanging fruit and soft options, which is the kind of language one would hear in Ranelagh, that I lived in Ballymun for 25 years. The Senator might have passed through it on the way to Ranelagh. I lived there and I loved it. It was full of community and action-----

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It is not any more.

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-----and education and full of the interaction between education and community. All generalisations are dangerous, including the ones I make myself, but the Senator's remark this morning about the lack of community in Ballymun should be withdrawn. He might be spending too much time in the restaurants of Ranelagh, with their low-hanging fruit, soft options and soft furnishings.

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I know a failure when I see a failure and I do not think Senator Marie-Louise O'Donnell has been in Ballymun very often recently.

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