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EVEN BEFORE THE process of establishing it began there were questions being asked of what, if anything, the banking inquiry could achieve given that it’s been six years since it happened, the considerable amount that is already known and the various criminal prosecutions under way.
Could a group of politicians get to the bottom of why the government decided to issue a blanket guarantee of the Irish banking system in September 2008 where others, including the current Central Bank governor, have apparently failed?
Or have they failed? Isn’t the broad outline of what happened already known? That a credit-fuelled building boom caused banks to lend beyond their means, lax regulation meant they weren’t caught and when the bubble burst they brought the economy and the very sovereignty of the State down with them.
Politicians, ill-prepared and ill-advised, made a fatal decision to guarantee all assets and liabilities of those failed or failing financial institutions and plunged the State into an unsustainable debt position that would, two years later, force it into a Troika bailout. That’s roughly what happened, right?
Well apparently politicians are going to find out more. They are going to grill former taoisigh, the regulators, the officials, the auditors and get to the bottom of all of this. Brian Cowen and many others will be hauled before public hearings, be made to sweat it out and answer tough questions.
That’s of course if the committee even manages to get the ball rolling at all.
The special Oireachtas Committee established to carry out the inquiry cannot even agree on its membership with the government having lost its majority on the committee after the opposition succeeded in adding two opposition senators to the nine-member panel which already consisted of seven TDs – four government and three opposition.
The coalition’s error in process of selecting the senators was simple. When it appointed the seven TDs it expressly named them in the formal motion that went before the Dáil.
Yet when it came to appointing two senators it left the matter up to the little-known and little-used Seanad Committee of Selection and, most importantly, the motion before the upper house did not specify the desire for one government and one independent senator.
This left the goal wide open for the opposition to do what it did and appoint two of its own – independent Seán Barrett (who the government can live with) and Fianna Fáil’s Marc MacsSharry (who the government cannot live with).
The government even had the opportunity to ensure it didn’t happen when it came to the selection committee.
Last week’s meeting of the Committee of Selection could have been adjourned by its chair, Fine Gael upper house leader Maurice Cummins, but it wasn’t despite the fact it was apparent that the government was missing a number of members that meant it would lose a vote.
The reasons for this are unclear and Cummins hasn’t returned calls.
Despite allowing this to happen – and not doing anything to stop it when it could have – the government now appears determined to reverse the decision and add its favoured candidate, the Labour senator Susan O’Keeffe, as a replacement for MacSharry.
All of this is politics and indicative of the government’s desire to control the committee. Fianna Fáil’s Michael McGrath, who understandably wants MacSharry and not O’Keeffe, said as much this morning and how right he is.
Why, if this is about finding out the facts of the banking collapse, does the government need to have control over a committee set up to establish these facts?
But perhaps more importantly, even if we accept the principle that it should have a majority what does it say about the government’s competence that it cannot even ensure this is the case?
All this has succeeded in doing is delaying the banking inquiry even getting under way – its first meeting was due to take place tomorrow but has now been postponed because there is no agreement on the membership.
Many would say it’s already been delayed too long but many more might also say that if this is how it’s going to be run, what’s the point in carrying it out at all?
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Ultimately FG wanted to use this inquiry to throw mud at FF just before the next general election, looks like it may have backfired! And they run the country?
Unless individuals involved are held accountable as done in the US, this enquiry is of no use, a waste of our money and will tell us less than what we already know.
There was no accountability in the us rob. One guy went to jail. The rest for the most part MADE money during the slump and are back to taking the same insane risks with depositors money
At this stage I’d settle for one. But that will never happen. this charade is a waste of time and taxpayers money, money we don’t have to waste. It’s an insult to the people who are shouldering the burden of the bank collapse.
ie: us!
As most politicians in this country couldn’t find their own hole with both hands and a map I don’t hold out much hope for a banking enquirey
It’s pretty clear at this stage that rather then trying to find out what exactly happened Enda the small minded individual wants to use it to but the boot into FF.
and that would be a problem why exactly ? Considering the dopey electorate seems to have forgotten who ruined this country i think it’s timely.
They also seem to have forgot the top 3 parties were in near full agreement on economic policy.
We even bragged about it thru the IDA touting it as policy stability ergo we were a good investment
CAB should be doing this.
In most cases, even the wonton fraud ( to u and me) was perfectly legal.
That’s what you get when your industry purchases the political leadership of the western world thru campaign donations..you get the laws you want.
There’s nothing to find out. We know what happened.
This is about pro bailout political hacks, who’ve done nothing to stop it happening again, getting their 5 min of fame doing faux outrage grilling “bankers”.
Most people on this don’t have a clue about economics or finance anyway they won’t even know the right questions to ask
At least Mac Sharry can ask his father.
Expectations of competence, smartness and agility in this Government have disappeared. They are so diabolically incoherent and incompetent that the Oireachtas is in the tax defaulters list. As far as this Inquiry is concerned, it is likely to be nothing more than a country club debate by the bewildered into the affairs of the blind and they have about as much capacity to control that as a two year old infant has over its bowels.
” but now its attempts to reverse this threaten to undermine the whole process of finding out what happened to the Irish banking system.”
Well was that not the whole idea from the beginning. You do not think they want the sheeple to learn the whole truth, do you?
You got to think devious here, think like a psychopath, if you want to learn truth.
The inquiry should only have one question to ask:
Who told Patrick Neary to look the other way?
It was impossible for a man in his position not to know what was going on…a child of ten would have known something was up…this defence of incompetence is a complete load of boll*x
If the motley crew of politicians on the banking enquiry organise properly into a search Party, they might even locate famous missing Bank Guarantee letters.
Bertie could be roped in for the looking-up-every-tree part of the search around Dublin 2.
And why the hell must the crew have a Government majority? It’s not as if Inquiry findings are to be voted upon!
A shambles from the start.
Doubt if anything new emerges. Inquiry will probably conclude that Taoiseach Cowen and late Mr Lenihan had few other workable options on night of bank guarantee, other than what was actually done. Probably would have been too risky for Ireland’s economy and credibility abroad to tell Bondholders to get stuffed. Greece succeeded here where Ireland failed, albeit later in the process of saving Euro.
Angela better remember this, in the heel of the hunt!
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