Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

I agree with Deputy Kenny that the Minister's integrity is not in question. I imagine he is over-stretched, as are his officials. However the Minister has put himself at risk with the answers provided to the House this afternoon. We are both agreed that the reason the Minister took his stated position on 29 September was because of the rumours that were rife concerning Anglo Irish Bank, the crashing share price and the knock-on effects of these on the banking system. In any case, that is what the Minister told the House. Then, the Minister was unable to answer certain questions and he informed the House he engaged PricewaterhouseCoopers to find out the answers. Now, it seems he is telling the House that when he received the PricewaterhouseCoopers report, he read extensive tracts, but not this particular tract. He seems to be saying this matter was not considered a risk factor.

The Minister must explain to the House how his officials came to that conclusion. How did the officials decide that this matter ought immediately be referred to the Financial Regulator, but kept from the Minister for Finance? How could the Minister's officials decide to conceal this critical information from him? How could the Minister regard what Deputy Burton has described as this Enron-style ruse at deception as just another customer that he would like to forget about? The Minister had no wish to race through the pages of the report naming the bank's customers. He preferred to forget them. How could he forget this one? The Minister must attempt to explain to the House a second time how he has risked so much taxpayers' money in rescuing this bank in circumstances in which he initially did not bother to read the relevant section of the report, and then when he did become aware of the position, he proceeded anyway with the measures to nationalise the bank.

I cannot understand how the Department could have acted in this way, given the anxiety that must have awaited the completion of the PricewaterhouseCoopers report. The Department must have been very keen to read its contents and its conclusions, to determine whether the bank was solvent, to ascertain the loan to deposits ratio, and other critical questions. However, the officials decided to refer this critical question to the Financial Regulator, but not to the Minister and kept the details from him. Can the Minister explain this?

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