I move amendment No. 1:
In page 3, between lines 10 and 11, to insert the following:
1.–The Trustee Savings Banks Act, 1989, is hereby amended by the insertion of the following section after section 56:
56A.–In making an order pursuant to section 57 (as amended by the Trustee Savings Banks (Amendment) Act, 2001) the Minister shall have regard to the desirability of making provision in such order for persons who have for a substantial period been customers of a bank which is the subject of an order to receive a recognition of their loyalty to that bank.
The amendment provides that the Government should consider the possibility of giving a loyalty bonus, in effect, to long-term customers of the TSB in disposing of its interest in the TSB. The amendment is phrased in this way because I am advised that any more specific provision would be a charge on the Exchequer and would not be admissible. The intention of the amendment is, I hope, fairly clear.
The background is that what is now known as the TSB has been, in one form or other, in existence for about 200 years. It was originally set up by groups of people coming together and, effectively, providing a facility which would allow them to save. It has gone through a number of different mutations over a period of 200 years, since the start of the 19th century. The background is important because it is undeniable that customers of the TSB have a greater sense of loyalty and belonging to the TSB than customers of AIB or Bank of Ireland, for example. I have been contacted by a number of people, particularly from the Munster region, in the Limerick and Cork areas, who feel their loyalty should be in some way reflected in the manner of the disposal of the bank.
On Committee Stage the Minister said he strongly believes – I have no reason to doubt this – that there is no legal obligation on Government to make a gesture of this kind. That, in a sense, misses the point. What I am talking about is, in effect, an ex gratia payment which would acknowledge that people have deliberately chosen to save and place their money in the TSB and to support what they regard as a community-based bank going back, in many cases, over some decades.
As the Minister well knows, there is a provision to set up an ESOT as part of the rather complicated process of disposing or selling of the TSB to Irish Life. We have acknowledged in this House – the precedent is now well established – that the workforce is entitled to share in the proceeds of the sale. It seems it is only one further step from that to acknowledge that customers of a particular State enterprise are also entitled to, in some way, share in the proceeds of the sale. I understand that both the banks involved, the TSB and Irish Life, acknowledge that it is entirely a matter for the Minister to decide, that is, how he disposes of the proceeds of sale and, therefore, the matter falls to be decided by him.
I apologise that I missed Committee Stage. Unfortunately, I was not there to participate in the discussion at that stage. The Minister will recall that the Order of Business on that day went on for about an hour and a half longer than it normally does and Committee Stage was postponed on at least two occasions, as a result of which I unfortunately missed it. I record my apology in that regard.
The House will be aware that a precedent has been set with, for example, mutual societies when demutualised and that their members have shared in the proceeds of sale. Again, we are not talking about anything more than a gesture. The amount of money concerned, in most cases, was not huge and amounted to a few hundred pounds. The precedent is established and many TSB customers looking at what happened in Irish Permanent and what is now First Active will feel that they too are entitled to share in a similar way. I appreciate, of course, that there is a different legal structure but, nonetheless, we cannot expect that most customers of TSB will be as sensitive as perhaps people in this House might be to the legal niceties of the matter. I hope that even at this late stage the Minister will give some consideration to this issue.
