Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

When I asked the Taoiseach just before Christmas about holding an inquiry into what happened in the banking sector he was very reluctant to agree that there should be such an inquiry. He informed us today that he and the Government have given the matter careful consideration. That is true. They have given it very careful consideration. In the face of the Labour Party motion that is before the House tonight they have come up with a cleverly designed amendment that is calculated to make this an inquiry in name only; to keep it firmly behind closed doors, to drag it out for as long as possible and to exclude political accountability. What the Labour Party is proposing, and what the Fine Gael Party has proposed, is essentially a two-stage process, one which would involve a specialist investigation that would establish a book of evidence-type of document that would then be the subject of examination by an Oireachtas committee.

What the Government has proposed in its amendment is not a two-stage process but one which is three, arguably four stages long, designed to drag it on for as long as possible. I have a copy of the statement made by Senator Boyle in recent days in which we are told the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Gormley, put a few principles to the Taoiseach that the Green Party had agreed on, that the inquiry would be "public, open and have Oireachtas involvement". I am quoting directly from Senator Boyle. The inquiry the Taoiseach is proposing is not public, it will be held in private. It is not open, it will be conducted behind closed doors and it will have only a minimal amount of Oireachtas involvement. If the Minister, Deputy Gormley, thinks he has a compromise, it is one which replaces his call for a public inquiry with a concession of two private inquiries instead. That is totally deficient. First, it is three stages, arguably four if one includes the stage where the Governor of the Central Bank will be reporting on his own institution. The inquiry will be dragged out. I accept the Taoiseach has included dates for completion of each stage but if one takes the commission of investigation, for example, it will be set up in June, then one has the summer holidays. The Taoiseach says it will report within six months. We can safely predict that the first report from that commission of investigation will be to seek additional time.

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