Dáil debates

Tuesday, 19 January 2010

Leaders' Questions

 

4:00 pm

Photo of Enda KennyEnda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

No issue in the past 30 years has consumed the minds of the Irish public like the crisis that has arisen because of the catastrophic failure of our banking system. It is necessary that we conduct a comprehensive inquiry into the reasons for regulatory failure, the adoption of policy positions which amounted to an endorsement of that failure and the fact that hundreds of thousands of Irish people now have to pay the price.

Last week I published proposals on behalf of the Fine Gael Party on the kind of inquiry we would like to see. Under these proposals, the Oireachtas would be empowered to set out terms of reference for the collection of information necessary for an inquiry which would not cross the boundaries of the Director of Corporate Enforcement and the fraud squad. I am aware that the Labour Party has separately published a broadly similar set of proposals.

I reject the line that the Government has suddenly changed its position from opposing an inquiry to advocating an inquiry of sorts. I also reject the claim that the banking crisis was not caused in part by policy failures and lax regulatory reform while the Taoiseach was Minister for Finance. I do not accept the proposals published by the Government in response to the Labour Party Private Members' Motion for a number of reasons. First, the Government would commission the initial reports, the terms of which make no mention whatsoever of the responsibility and role of Government in the policy decisions which led in part to this crisis. Second, the establishment of the kind of commission being proposed by the Government would amount to a secretive whitewash, which is not in the interest of transparency or public accountability. Third, what the Taoiseach proposes would relegate the Oireachtas to a sideline position of no importance or centrality other than to be briefed by the Governor of the Central Bank and the regulator and to have reports laid before it which it would be invited to consider.

This proposal looks like a whitewash, a secretive concoction put together by Government. I contend that the Taoiseach, as leader of his party, is afraid to have the type of inquiry that the public wants, not in the interests of any individual but because of the ineffective regulatory reforms and lax approach the Government adopted and the policy positions driven principally by the Taoiseach in his former position as Minister for Finance, which put the economic ship of State on the rocks.

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