Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I wish Mr. Brendan Walsh the best of luck in his new role. As he has worked as a professor in national economics for many years he would have witnessed some of the peaks and troughs in the past. That is why I was anxious to get the point across that we need to use an institution that is structured to ensure the next trough is reduced. He made the point that most of this has happened previously. While this is probably the biggest financial crisis in almost 100 years the main determinants are not all that new. It is the lack of institutional memory that is available to the system which is at fault. From my perspective one of the major problems was the clear over-exposure of the property market and the over-exposure of access of cheap credit which led to the weaknesses within these institutions and that was not captured as such at the time. The Regling Watson report said this was a homemade disaster and a disaster which focused on the weakness in supervision.

For citizens this is the biggest catastrophe that has happened to their generation. We are a number of years away from it now. I understand six years is the statutory time span for individuals to be brought before the courts. We are clear on the generalities of the problem but not on the specific issues of who did wrong and what exactly they did wrong. It is a major concern for Irish society that four years on we are still in that position. How can we use the system as a tool to prevent this happening again? How can we create an institutional memory, if that is possible? How can we identify expeditiously the individuals and the actions they did or did not take as soon as possible?