Arthur Spring (Kerry North-West Limerick, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge all of that. I would like to raise one last issue with Professor Honohan. The Central Bank issues licences to banks in order to participate in the Irish economy. Has Professor Honohan, at any stage, given an instruction to bank directors to conduct an internal inquiry as to whether they were in breach of their fiduciary duties at the time the banks collapsed? Some of the directors have appeared before us here and said that they have had no inquiry into why the economy collapsed. They have no idea why the property cycle collapsed or why their own banks collapsed because they have not done an internal inquiry. That is not appropriate. If there was a problem in any institution governed by this State, there would be an internal inquiry immediately, whatever about an inquiry at a higher level. This committee will possibly be asked to look at a banking inquiry. Why has an internal inquiry not been done?

The Director of Corporate Enforcement has to analyse whether the people of Ireland have been well served by the Companies Acts over the years, particularly in light of the view that nobody is being made accountable for the collapse of the banking sector. Ultimately, every man, woman and child is feeling the consequences. Professor Honohan knows this and I am not trying to be too populist about it. However, why has there not been an examination as to whether the directors, at that point in time, were in breach of their fiduciary duties? One of the kerbstones of the directorship of a bank is to protect the asset, yet they destroyed the assets. The assets would not exist without the State having intervened.