THE OIREACHTAS DOES not have the power to set up a banking inquiry – so legislation is a bigger question than who carries out the actual inquiry, Deputy Alex White said last night.
White was speaking on RTÉ’s The Week in Politics yesterday when he made the comments.
When asked about the fact that there seems to be some dispute between the Finance Committee and Public Accounts Committee with regard to who will carry out the inquiry, White said:
The most important thing of all is we get an inquiry, that we put an inquiry together; a credible, efficient and meaningful inquiry, particularly in relation to what happened with the bank guarantee. Everyone in the entire community wants that. Everyone in the Oireachtas wants that. The entire community wants that.
He said that “far more important” than which committee carries out the inquiry is the fact the Oireachtas doesn’t have the inherent power itself to set up inquiries.
“I think there will have to be legislation put in place so that the Oireachtas takes the power to hold inquries,” he said.
He added:
I don’t think there would be great public support for a tribunal. But there is an argument for it as one option for dealing with this problem.
A No vote was returned in the referendum on Oireachtas inquiries last October. Recently, Minister Brendan Howlin described it as “unfortunate” that the public had made their own discernment on giving powers of inquiry to the houses of the Oireachtas.
Earlier this month, Deputy White welcomed the Public Accounts Committee’s publication of its analysis of options for the holding of a parliamentary inquiry into the banking collapse.
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