Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

I join my colleagues in wishing the Minister for Finance well in the personal challenge he faces. I thank Members for their contributions to this debate and my colleague and Labour Party finance spokesperson, Deputy Burton, for proposing the motion on a public inquiry into what happened in the banking system.

In ten minutes' time, every Member of the House will have a choice to make. That choice is either to vote for the Labour Party motion proposing an open public inquiry into what happened in all aspects of the banking system or to settle for the Fianna Fáil amendment to the motion which proposes some type of private, behind-closed-doors exercise that will be limited in its scope and which may well be restricted in its legal capacity. It will be no more than an inquiry in name.

Let us be clear about what the Labour Party is calling for. We are proposing a public inquiry to be conducted by an Oireachtas committee, that is, a committee of the elected representatives of the people, whose hard-earned tax money is going to fund the banks and whose businesses, jobs and earnings are being sacrificed so that Irish banking can be subsidised by the State. We propose that this Oireachtas committee should under legislation be given the power to appoint an investigator to carry out an investigation on a professional basis and to produce a book of evidence on which appropriate witnesses, including bankers, regulators, public officials and Ministers, will be questioned in public about what happened to the banking system and its consequences for the economy. The Government has sought to represent this choice as one between what the Government is proposing in its amendment to the Labour Party motion and a tribunal of inquiry that will cost a lot of money and might last forever. That is a false choice because nobody has suggested - certainly not the Labour Party - that there should be an inquiry of tribunal. We have proposed that there should be an Oireachtas committee, similar to that which undertook the DIRT inquiry, and that such an inquiry be carried out expeditiously.

Second, the Government line has been that one cannot have the type of inquiry that is proposed by the Labour Party because somehow it would be legally impeded from carrying out its work. In defence of that position the Government cites the Abbeylara judgment. We have addressed that difficulty by proposing a Bill which was prepared by Deputy Rabbitte and published last week which would give the Houses of the Oireachtas the power of inquiry available to every other Parliament I know of, would afford the committee the right to appoint an investigator and would delineate the difference between that type of public inquiry and the type of liability that would be imposed on people for criminal or civil purposes.

The arguments being made by the Government in opposing the Labour Party motion are false. The true Fianna Fáil position on this motion is that it does not want an inquiry into banking at all. When we first raised this with the Taoiseach before Christmas it was clear from his response to me that he and his party did not want an inquiry. Instead they wanted this matter brushed under the carpet. However, faced with the prospect of the Labour Party motion on this week's Order Paper the Government has cobbled together an amendment, a set of proposals it is calling an inquiry. Fianna Fáil is spinning it to those gullible enough to believe that what it proposes would somehow be as effective as a public inquiry.

It will not be effective for several reasons. First, what Fianna Fáil is proposing would be unnecessarily lengthy, comprising three or four stages, including a report by the Governor of the Central Bank, a preliminary investigation to be conducted in private and a commission of inquiry which would conduct its business in private. Only then would a report be presented to us. Although dates are indicated by which various stages of this process should be completed, we all know that, as has happened in the case of every commission of inquiry that has been appointed to date, additional time will inevitably be sought if those dates are not met. If a commission of investigation is established at the end of June, as proposed by the amendment, the summer will intervene and it will be autumn before it starts its business. We can safely predict that by the end of 2010, the first report that will come from the commission of investigation will be one seeking additional time.

Second, the role being proposed for the Oireachtas is purely minimal and superficial. The Oireachtas committee or Members of the Oireachtas will be briefed on what the private investigations and commissions are doing in the early stages but thereafter it is only at the end of the process that the report of the commission will be laid before the Oireachtas in the same way as the annual report of a State body, with no commitment that the Oireachtas can do anything about it and certainly no commitment that the Oireachtas can follow it up by examining those who are brought before it.

Third, what is being proposed in this amendment is legally restricted. I heard the Minister for Finance argue, as has been pointed out by the Labour Party, that there are certain restrictions on what the Governor of the Central Bank can do and say. Section 33AK of the Central Bank Act 1942, as amended by the Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland Act 2004, clearly states that the Governor may not comment publicly on matters that are regarded as commercially sensitive involving the regulated institutions. Of course the Minister is correct that the Governor is not prevented by that provision in the legislation from making a report, offering his opinion on the terms of reference of a commission of inquiry or any matter, or reaching general conclusions about what happened in the banking system. He could probably do that now without any need for the provisions in the Government's proposal. However, he cannot comment on the relationship between the Central Bank and the individual institutions, an issue that is central to the entire matter. Without that relationship being examined, an inquiry would be quite weak and worthless.

Perhaps the most significant omission from the Government's proposal is the exclusion of its own role in the process. The Minister has said that the purpose of the so-called inquiry now proposed by Fianna Fáil is to examine the causes of what happened in the banking system. Deliberately excluded from the process is Fianna Fáil's own role in the handling of the banking crisis, including what happened in September 2008, namely, the series of meetings with representatives of banking institutions which led to the Government's decision to introduce a blanket guarantee that has ended up with the taxpayer having of necessity to take responsibility and carry the can for what happened in banking. An issue deserving of particular consideration is the situation where Anglo Irish Bank was given a guarantee in circumstances where we now know it was a delinquent bank engaged in irresponsible lending and had to be nationalised within months of securing that guarantee. All of this will be excluded from the terms of the inquiry. I challenge the Minister for Finance to show how one can properly examine the causes of the banking crisis if one cannot examine the management of the crisis by the Government and make connections between that and the causes of the crisis, particularly in so far as those causes relate to failures of policy.

I am not surprised Fianna Fáil has taken this position in regard to the Labour Party motion. That party clearly does not want an inquiry that would at a minimum expose the policy failures of various Ministers for Finance, the present Taoiseach in particular, and the obligation that would be on them to account for their policy handling and management of banking during their terms of office. That is the least worse scenario as far as Fianna Fáil is concerned. At worst what might be exposed is the pivotal role of the party in the toxic triangle that brought about the banking crisis, the collapse in construction and the consequences for the economy.

What I am surprised and disappointed at is the position of the Green Party.

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