In These New Times

Irish Examiner

By Paul O’Brien, Political Correspondent

TUESDAY, AUGUST 18, 2009

SENIOR bankers should be hauled before a televised Oireachtas inquiry to explain how they made such “a mess” that they required a State bailout, said the chairman of An Bord Snip.

Economist Colm McCarthy, who led the group tasked with identifying savings in the public sector, said the public deserved an explanation of how the banks had landed in such trouble. Mr McCarthy made clear he was not advocating another State tribunal which could drag on for years.

Instead, he suggested the investigation be modelled on the DIRT inquiry, a short but incisive parliamentary investigation into tax evasion which was broadcast live by TG4 in 1999.

The DIRT inquiry held public hearings for just 26 days between August 31 and October 12 that year, but managed to interview 142 witnesses in that time.

The Labour Party last night supported the call for a DIRT-style inquiry.

“The decisions made in regard to banking, and particularly in respect of the financing of property deals, has left the country facing what is probably the most serious economic crisis in the history of the State,” said Labour deputy leader Joan Burton.

The DIRT inquiry was conducted by a sub-committee of the powerful Dáil Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

The current PAC chairman, Fine Gael’s Bernard Allen, backed Mr McCarthy’s call for an Oireachtas probe, but said the nature of such an inquiry would have to be subject to cross-party agreement. “I believe these matters certainly merit further investigation.

“It’s a question of finding the right forum, be it a sub-committee of PAC or some other committee,” said Mr Allen.

Fianna Fáil TD Michael Ahern, who chairs the Oireachtas Finance Committee, said the proposal was an “interesting” one.

“The whole issue certainly warrants further explanation and investigation,” he said.

“We all want to make sure these mistakes aren’t repeated. We just have to make sure we frame any investigation in the best way.”

A probe by the Director of Corporate Enforcement is already under way into Anglo Irish Bank, which was nationalised by the Government in January.

Mr McCarthy said the Oireachtas inquiry, which would not interfere with that probe, was necessary so banks receiving State assistance could explain how things went so wrong.

“The general public still hasn’t had a thorough explanation of what went wrong with the Irish banking system,” he told RTÉ.

“We know that there were weaknesses and failures in regulation and supervision at the level of the Central Bank and the Financial Regulator, as there were in many countries, and there have been inquiries into how do we do bank regulation better and so on. But how did the banks themselves get into this mess?”

The inquiry could go through “line by line what happened when, who made what decisions, why were they made [and] what was the policy”, he said.

This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Tuesday, August 18, 2009