Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

Does the Taoiseach agree it beggars belief that the most senior executives in the bank profess to know nothing of how they became implicated in these affairs? How can that make sense to the average person? Mr. Roy Douglas, for example, seems to implicate the bank as an institution when he says that when he climbed the corporate ladder he was invited to participate in this scheme. He makes it sound like he was being offered the key to the executive loo, that this was just a perk of the job that came when he achieved high office. I remember questioning Mr. Douglas at the DIRT inquiry, and it was reported in The Irish Times on 14 September 1999. I asked whether it was not the case that the Ansbacher procedure was "a fairly extraordinary legal construct", to which Mr. Douglas replied that it was the simple straightforward set of relationships that exist between a depositor and a bank.

I do not know what that implies. I would like to have the opportunity to examine him again now. I do not know from the Taoiseach's answer whether the information will be shared as between the three inquiries. I do not know whether the Taoiseach has any intention of causing the people concerned to be prosecuted and I do not know whether a surcharge will be levied as a result of the manner in which the banks have betrayed their trust and the trust of the public.

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