Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)

He came close to saying that but the Government does not agree with the Governor in this respect. The Government believes there should be a commission of inquiry. The Governor did not make the case for the kind of investigation Fine Gael is calling for, and neither did Herr Regling and Mr. Watson. There is a reservation that must be entered and Herr Regling and Mr. Watson are careful to distinguish between key issues that are amenable to further investigation through a legally oriented process such as the commission of investigation and other issues that are less concrete and verifiable. Perhaps they are more appropriately the subject of policy review. A reservation must be entered and, in their report, Messrs. Regling and Watson are careful to distinguish between those issues which are amenable to further investigation through a legally orientated process such as a commission of investigation and other issues which are less concrete and verifiable and may be more appropriately the subject of policy review. The Government accepts this distinction and in its statement of last Wednesday set out how it proposed to take forward further consideration of these two different strands.

In regard to those areas for further investigation by a commission of investigation the report of Messrs. Regling and Watson sets out a comprehensive set of issues covering specific breaches of corporate governance and failures in risk management, which the report's authors consider are amenable to a properly executed legally orientated process and a committee of investigation. For that reason, the Government prepared and published the draft terms of reference which seek to encapsulate these issues. The Government went beyond what the authors of the report suggested and also inserted the issue of any communications from the Department of Finance to the supervisory system.

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