Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

Many people have an income of €55,000 a year or less. Many of those people already have lost their jobs or businesses and those who have not have had their pay reduced. All those people this morning picked up their newspapers and read that Mr. Fingleton paid himself €55,000 a month for the first four months of 2009, after he had got the bank guarantee. On top of this, he paid himself €1 million of a bonus that has not yet been paid back. The interesting point about this is that as Members now know, Mr. Fingleton was heading an organisation that will cost taxpayers €2,700 million to bail out. That is almost the total amount of money the Government will be seeking in the next budget. The reason this money is being sought is because of the scandalous way in which that building society conducted its business down the years. The building society was set up to give mortgages to house buyers but instead, it was giving out great buckets of money to approximately 30 people in a process of rolling enrichment or at least that was the expectation.

As I stated in the House yesterday, for some time there had been a degree of discussion in business circles that all was not well in the Irish Nationwide Building Society. Yesterday, I asked the Taoiseach about his period in office as Minister for Finance between 2004 and 2008. I asked him whether he had received reports from the Financial Regulator, the Registrar of Friendly Societies or any State agencies that things were not as they should be with Irish Nationwide. The Taoiseach replied that he had received no such report and he presented Members with a picture that while the banks were running the country, he and his colleagues were sitting around the Cabinet table hearing no evil and see no evil as far as matters being amiss was concerned. Of course he now states there was systemic failure in the regulatory system.

While Members will deal with the regulatory system in due course, I wish to focus on what the Government was doing and specifically what the then Minister for Finance was doing at that time. A letter appeared in this morning's edition of a newspaper from a member of Irish Nationwide, pointing out that he had raised concerns about the building society at its annual general meetings. Yesterday, I drew attention to some comments that I had made in the Chamber in the course of the Dáil debate regarding things I had heard about Irish Nationwide on the grapevine and around the town. When the Taoiseach was Minister for Finance, did he ever hear anything to the effect that things might not be as they should in Irish Nationwide? Yesterday, he told Members he did not get a report from the regulatory bodies or from his officials drawing his attention to any problems in the building society. However, did he ever ask for such a report or did he ever ask any questions? For example, when the Bill to demutualise Irish Nationwide came to his Department in the normal course of events and he was asked for his observations thereon, did he then ask anyone to provide him with a report on what was happening within the society and on how it was conducting its business? Was he lobbied by Irish Nationwide in the run-up to the publication of the legislation to demutualise the society and if so, can he tell Members what was the nature of such lobbying?

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