Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)

It is timely for the House to be considering the Central Bank Reform Bill 2010. The various points raised by my colleague, Deputy Jim O'Keeffe, sufficiently illustrate the need for reform or, if not reform, total and absolute application of the regulations that are already in place. On 29 September 2008, this House and the country as a whole became aware of some of the implications of certain actions, from a financial and budgetary perspective, such as the hardship that was likely to be inflicted on the Irish people. I mentioned at the time that the Governor of the Central Bank, certain officials in the Department of Finance and the Financial Regulator were at fault and should be fired, unless it was the case that they were carrying out Government instructions. Whenever something extraordinary happens in any Department - in relation to child abuse, crime or anything else - it is always decided that there is a need to introduce legislation but there is never much regard for the failure to recognise the legislation that was already in place.

The latest phrase we hear is "systemic failure". The system did not fail, but many of the people within it failed. Many of the people who oversaw the system failed. Many of the people who were in positions of power, authority and direction failed. The people and the country paid and will continue to pay for many years to come.

I refer to previous debates in the House. Why does everybody decide something should be done after the crisis? There were procedures in place to alert everybody to what was happening long before it happened. Did somebody come forward and say, "We could not do that because there were no regulations, accounting procedures or guidelines. The fundamentals are not quite right."? They were not, and have not been for the past ten years. Everybody knows that, but nobody wants to be seen to admit it. I cannot understand that.

I thought at this stage in the debate somebody would have stood up and said we now have a serious problem. The problem was that nothing was done by the people in authority or by the people who give direction to the people in authority. As a result, the nation and everybody in it now pays. I have said many times during the passage of legislation in this House that I would like to know if the Bill, when it is passed by the House, is likely to have a serious impact. Will it be seriously adhered to by the people for whom the Bill was produced in the first place? I am not referring to the ordinary citizen, but the people in control, those with power and direction, those in Government and the relevant Ministers and authorities. I see no indication that is likely to happen, which is unfortunately the case.

I am a member of the much-maligned Committee of Public Accounts which sat to examine issues of this nature under the DIRT inquiry some years ago. It was brought to the attention of the members of the committee at that time that various Acts of Parliament were ignored at crucial times. Nobody could be found ultimately responsible. There was a reference to a vague statutory instrument which could not be tracked down to anybody in particular. The consequences for the country and the running of it were colossal, as was the collection of taxes which were due. It was a regulatory system. At that time there was also a tax amnesty.

What has happened since is nothing more than a total and cavalier disregard for every lesson, issue and direction given by the legislators in this House at that time. Why did that happen? We came to believe that we were the wealthiest country in the world. What a lot of codology. What a laugh. We were never the wealthiest country in the world. We pretended we were, just like those who said they would pay themselves because they were good and deserved it.

In the past week all of us have had the honour of being the subject of a media investigation into whether we qualified for or received pensions, and whether we were illegally receiving pensions and if we would give them up voluntarily. I say without the slightest hesitation that I have no difficulty in not drawing down a pension because it is insignificant in any event. However, I have difficulty with a smokescreen being created which is of benefit to those who want one at the current time. Serious issues which affect the budgetary situation in this country were rejected by the European institutions in the past week and were discovered as being seriously remiss. There has not been a single word about it. It is an issue which will put a further liability of billions of euro on the backs of the people and taxpayers of this country for the next ten years.

There has not been a word of inquiry from the media at all because they have been well and truly harnessed. I feel sorry for them. They have been hijacked by the Government or by forces in this country who have an interest in this issue. This week we should have been discussing the implications of the decision by EUROSTAT regarding off-balance sheet accounting which has become commonplace and was commonplace in many institutions in this country. I cannot understand why we have not had a debate on that issue. I cannot understand why the whole country has not come to a halt and said, "What is happening here? Why has something not been done about this?".

We have been discovered at last. All of a sudden there was a major issue about pensions. It was a satisfactory smokescreen. I often wonder whether somebody has hypnotised the media into the belief that this is where the real pot of gold is because they should have been focused in a different direction. I want to dwell on this point for a moment. We now live in an era of experts. We have experts to tell us about virtually everything we want to do. We have experts who want to tell us when, how and where to invest, how to make more money, be better and move ahead more quickly in the world and how to be faster and more glib than anybody else. However, we do not have any experts who seem to want to adhere to fundamental structures, guidelines and regulations which have been put in place for a purpose.

It was well known in this country for at least eight or nine years that the normal guidelines which applied to the financial and banking sector were no longer being observed. It was a fact of life. Three or four people in the media were the only ones who raised questions about it. Deputy Jim O'Keeffe and people on this side of the House also referred to it. Every time anybody drew attention to that issue, he or she was denigrated and cast out as being unpatriotic, unfit to be Irish, not proud of the nation and no longer a proper citizen. That is what happened.

There are guidelines laid down in financial and banking services which require certain procedures in regard to borrowing, lending and back-to-back loans, all of which we discussed and dealt with at length during the DIRT inquiry many years ago. All of this information was available. Everything had been learned and done and dusted before. A short time ago we were bigger and better and the fundamentals were right. The fundamentals have not been right for at least eight to ten years. The quicker we recognise that in this House, the better. If we do not recognise that smokescreens do not solve the problem, what the real issues are and their full implications, and the full and likely impact on the country and the political and financial systems, we are wasting our time.

I do not want to be confrontational; it is of no benefit to me whatsoever as an Opposition politician. I find it extraordinary when the media concentrates on the politicians and the Members of this House. This is Parliament; it debates and the Government makes the commitments. The Government comes into the House - in a democracy it must always have a majority unless there is a hung Parliament - and disposes. That is what has happened here, and the country has paid the price for it.

There were many experts in the so-called good days. If we want to find out whether they were good days, we should ask any small businessperson, shopkeeper or man or woman who manages a household budget in the country. They know where everything went wrong and they told us then that this could not last and this was crazy stuff. Nobody wanted to stop because everybody was having a good time. Now the emphasis in on punishing the most readily available victim. That is what happened in the French Revolution. Another guillotine was set up to appease the crowd, which was dissatisfied. A dangerous scenario could emerge unless normality is restored. It can only be restored when there is clear commitment that those who are given the responsibility to oversee discharge their duties, carry out their functions and ensure regulations are observed to the letter; otherwise, we are wasting our time. The way it is looking, the people who were charge with these responsibilities will not pay. They will escape and move away to a far flung place where the sun shines and from where they can talk back to us as if they have done no wrong. We will get one chance at this. We need to restore public confidence not in politicians or the institutions of the State, but in those who were given well paid jobs in these institutions.

I am not a spokesman for the Taoiseach or a Minister. Many of those who failed to do their job, as a result of which the country is paying heavily, were paid multiples of the salary of the Taoiseach, prime ministers in other jurisdictions and even the US President. What are we at? Today, the media are occupied with somebody's pension. In the order of importance, where are we going? The media will say what they are doing is about perception and it is the right thing to do. That is an education at this stage. If the right things were done, we would not be in the position we are now.

I often wonder where people obtain their information. I received an e-mail earlier from a poor, unfortunate guy who was probably genuinely expressing his view. He said he had a terribly hard year in 2009, having worked 60 hours a week, and he paid his taxes and so on. He did not say this but I presume he had come to the conclusion that Members of both Houses had a much easier time. I assure everyone that I worked more than 120 hours a week last year. I did not claim credit for that nor do I wish to do so. That is the job we do. However, I like to think other Members and I do the job to the best of our ability without expertise, without reference to advisers and spin doctors and without excuses afterwards because any decision we make, we stand over. That is the job we are elected to do and, at the end of the day, we go before the people again to secure another mandate.

If we continue to cloud the issues and raise smokescreens in the way we have, we will be found out in a much more serious way. Suddenly, European institutions and other international bankers will awaken to what is happening in Ireland and they will have a good look at the institutions here and the people running them. They will not look for outside experts because they will look for the experts who are in place and who were allegedly carrying out a function. They will ask why they did not carry out the function and why they have continued not to do so.

There have been financial crises in other jurisdictions but it is also necessary to recognise that we had a great deal to do with our own problems. We did not need imports. We did it so well that it would make a great film even covering the ten-year period it took to do it. At the end of the day, the people who are deemed to be the culprits for the situation in which we find ourselves are the politicians, not the Government or the Ministers who were in direct control at the time and those who were in institutions such as the Central Bank and the Department of Finance or the Financial Regulator. In God's name, what were they doing? Were they at their desks? If so, were they awake? They cost the country dearly.

I do not see any stomach in the media or elsewhere for somebody to carry out a serious investigation into what happened. Worse still, this could happen again. In the same way we had the DIRT inquiry and the scam associated with it, light fingered regulation could be repeated. There was clearly a disregard for all the regulations in place and, ultimately, the country will pay. The sad part is people on social welfare and those whose mortgages are several months in arrears and who are in danger of having their houses repossessed will pay in a severe and serious way for the nonchalance of those in charge of the system who had no regard for what was happening. They will pay again and again as long as there is disregard for the regulations in place.

I referred to the need for change but there is no need to amend the legislation. The regulations are in place but they just need to be put into operation. Why is the Government hiding behind camouflage whereby every time there is a crisis, the answer is to introduce more legislation? That has never worked. Where emergencies arose over the past number of years, it was clear the necessary regulation and legislation was in place. However, the problem was somebody decided to ignore it. The people running the system have failed, not the system itself, and until those charged with responsibility for the system recognise the job they are supposed to do and come forward, put their hands up and accept that responsibility, we are wasting our time in the House. We are debating in a vacuum. The debate will have no impact on the future or the past and it will only cause the public to have even less confidence than they have in what they see as the culprits for, and the cause of, the problem.

Dáil committees are deemed to be necessary because of the success of the DIRT inquiry. It is cited as the epitome of how inquiries should be carried out. However, there is only one thing wrong with this proposition. There are powerful vested interests in all the services in this country and when a committee of the House, as opposed to the courts, goes into investigative mode, gets close to the target and begins to pinch those who feel threatened, there will be a reaction. It will be sinister, punitive, dangerous and intimidating and the success of the investigative procedure will be determined by the degree to which Members will be committed to take the hit and the criticism that will go with it and to do their job. That will be an example for those throughout the system who did not do their job for a long number of years.

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