Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

All that reply tells me is that it seems this Government is soft on corporate crime. The matter of the Financial Regulator investigating this matter is a joke in the present circumstances. The Financial Regulator has 380 staff and it was getting quarterly reports apparently about these loans, which included, we were told, information about the loans that Mr. FitzPatrick had taken out, and it could not spot what was going on. The idea of the Financial Regulator investigating this matter does not fill me with any confidence. I have more confidence in the Director of Corporate Enforcement investigating it and he has the power, as I understand it, to apply for the appointment of a High Court inspector. To my knowledge, no such application has been made. Neither have we heard about any Garda investigation or any other type of investigation. The Taoiseach will have to do better in terms of reassuring the public that this matter is being treated seriously and being seriously investigated.

I have not seen or heard anything that convinces me or conveys to me that a serious investigation is being undertaken into what happened here. It is not acceptable that the people involved in this can simply walk off into the sunset without being called to account for what happened here. Everybody knows that Anglo Irish Bank was at the heart of the banking crisis that caused the Taoiseach to introduce legislation here in September to provide a blanket guarantee. We know that banking crisis is at the heart of the economic difficulty now facing this country where people are losing jobs and businesses are going to the wall. If there has been wrongdoing and crimes committed in respect of the conduct of the banking business of that bank, it must be investigated, identified and prosecuted. The kind of soft glove treatment the Taoiseach appears to be giving to it is not good enough.

There have been reports in newspapers during the last two days, particularly in respect of Anglo, what was made known to the Financial Regulator and what was conveyed to the Department of Finance. We were told from a report in one newspaper at least that the current Minister for Finance was briefed on the position in Anglo Irish Bank when he took up office.

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