MARY O’ROURKE, an aunt of the late Brian Lenihan, has insisted the former Fianna Fáil finance minister was told by Jean Claude Trichet that the Irish government must save the banks at all costs, in the days before the 2008 guarantee was announced.
The former president of the ECB told members of the banking inquiry this week that there was “no message to Brian, no message to the government of Ireland” when asked about remarks the late finance minister made in an RTÉ documentary five years ago.
In an interview for the RTÉ One documentary ‘Freefall’, broadcast in September 2010, Lenihan said:
Mr [Jean-Claude] Trichet [ECB President] rang me, and hadn’t been able to get through to me. I was at a racecourse in County Kilkenny at a Fianna Fáil event on the Saturday. So I caught up with on Mr Trichet’s message the following day which was that ‘you must save your banks at all costs’.
However, asked about the remark by Labour senator Susan O’Keeffe, Trichet said “there was no call to Brian”. Trichet had earlier said he had a “very close and confident cooperation” with Lenihan, and paid tribute to him.
Speaking today, however, O’Rourke took issue with Trichet’s answer, saying the message had definitely been given to her late nephew.
“He may not have telephoned, but somebody acting for him did telephone,” she insisted.”We have his voice saying that – its his own voice.”
The former head of the Frankfurt-based bank spoke to Banking Inquiry members at an event in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham in Dublin on Thursday. He had refused to appear before the committee in Leinster House, saying that the ECB is accountable only to Europe, and not national parliaments.
“He did not take an oath,” O’Rourke observed of the appearance, speaking to RTÉ’s Marian Finucane.
“He did not have to take an oath. Anyone who goes into Leinster House to the committee must take an oath, and as we know you cannot lie under oath.
The minute I observed it from a comfortable chair in my own home I said ‘this is all wrong’. I had a foreboding that the setting was wrong.
The event, O’Rourke said, recalled images of schoolboys or schoolgirls being summoned to their master.
“I thought he was very wily and very clever,” she said.
Last month, the former Education Minister said she wanted to put the Banking Inquiry “on notice” that she and other members of Brian Lenihan’s family would be keeping a close eye on proceedings in the coming months.
She said she and Conor Lenihan may have information useful to the committee which is not in the public domain – although she said she had “no desire” personally to appear before the Inquiry.
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