Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

I have been asking the Taoiseach about his knowledge of various malpractices and cronyism in the banking system that led to the problems currently being experienced by our banking sector and economy. In response, he has been telling me he did not hear of or know about any of these practices when he was Minister for Finance. As a result of parliamentary questions tabled by Deputy Joan Burton and freedom of information material obtained by The Irish Times and published in an article on Monday, we have some idea of the state of the Taoiseach's thinking on these matters when he was Minister for Finance. In 2007, he set up an advisory forum on financial regulation and legislation. The forum was to draft the heads of a Bill to modernise financial regulation. It was quite active and met seven times in 2007 and 2008.

There are two points of interest in respect of the forum. The first is that the Taoiseach brought in people from the banking and financial institutions to become part of the forum to draft the legislation. Second, he gave them a brief to prepare what was called "cross-sectoral principles-led regulation of the financial sector", which is the official way of expressing light-touch regulation. As it turned out, the Government changed its mind on the kind of legislation in question and the means of preparing it because the forum was wound up quietly in 2009 and the legislation it was preparing has disappeared.

Does the Taoiseach now accept, given all we now know about what was going on in the financial institutions and about their malpractice, that he made a mistake in bringing in the bankers to write their own legislation? Does he accept he made a mistake in giving them a brief to prepare light-touch regulation given what we now know about the consequences of light-touch regulation in the banking and financial services sector?

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