Derek Nolan (Galway West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome publication of the Bill and the early opportunity to discuss it in the Dáil. It is very important. Some of the discussion in the House has been about the relevance of Parliament and a number of Deputies have questioned our ability to conduct inquiries. In fact, it happens every week in this Parliament at the Committee of Public Accounts and various other committees, where we inquire and put questions to people, get information and compile reports. We do this every week the Dáil sits, yet Members are saying they would be incapable of doing it, that they would be biased and that they would be incapable of being relevant or a part of this. That is a contradiction.

During the last general election campaign when people were so cognisant of the failings of politics and the institutions of the State, many of us tried to put together a platform that would increase the Parliament's relevance, by making the scrutiny of different legislative functions, the organisations of the State and issues more relevant and by giving power to the Dáil and the Seanad to serve that function. Now, when we bring forward legislation which will make inquiry forums standard, which is what the American and most European democracies have as a standard, Members are saying they cannot handle it because they will be biased and incapable of doing it. Many of the contributions have been flawed. Members say they do not wish to be judge and jury or to make findings against their peers. That means they have not read the Bill. The Bill has been drafted in conformity with the Abbeylara judgment. There was an attempt to overturn that judgment in the referendum held in 2011, but as the people rejected it, we are still bound by that ruling. It specifically states the Oireachtas cannot make adverse findings against a person's good name as that is not the role of the Oireachtas. The proposals before the Dáil are different.

I was a member of the sub-group of the Committee of Public Accounts that drafted the report on an inquiry into the banking sector. We had a great deal of engagement with senior counsel and members of the parliamentary research team in the Dáil when we went through the different legal options. The inquire, record and report model, the first model proposed in the Bill, is very different from what is being said in ill-informed contributions in the House.

What it says is that, as a parliamentarian, one can inquire, which means one can ask questions, record responses and report what was said. It does not state one can make a judgment, cast aspersions and destroy someone's name, or otherwise. The model proposed in the legislation is very restrictive.

In many ways, I very much regret that the referendum held in 2011 was not passed because it would have allowed for a much broader type of inquiry into any topic, in line with fair procedures. However, the people, in their wisdom, voted against it. I can understand the reasons for its defeat but still believe that, after we have tested the new model with a number of inquiries, we should return to the people to ask for more powers and demonstrate that we can hold a credible, independent, non-partisan inquiry. However, we must prove that we are capable of acting in the way I have described.

The second inquiry model which we discussed at meetings of the Committee of Public Accounts and which is also covered in the legislation pertains to an inquiry that has a legislative function. The Oireachtas is entitled to inquire into matters within its remit. Legislation is clearly within our remit and we should be entitled to investigate and make findings to inform us in our role as legislators. Members have stated in the House that they do not want to be involved in inquiries. If, however, an inquiry is very useful to one's function as a legislator, one should surely be saying one is capable of and should be carrying out inquiries. There has been much ill-informed and ill-thought-out commentary on this matter.

There are sections in the Bill that provide for fair procedures. The main reason people were very uncomfortable with the referendum was they were uncertain that the language proposed to be incorporated into the Constitution would establish a legal right to fair procedures. Sections 14 to 25, inclusive, which pertain to the impugning of a person's good name, privileges for witnesses, immunities, guidelines for procedures and the role of the chairman, address that issue and establish fair procedures in statute. Given that this has been such a controversial topic, in that a referendum has been rejected, legislative scrutiny needs to be particularly strong. Having a very strong Committee Stage will be particularly important.

One of the issues the Bill will facilitate, which issue has been mentioned, is the holding of a banking inquiry. One could be forgiven for calling the Bill the banking inquiries Bill because it has been so intrinsically linked with the banking inquiry under discussion. Time may have passed since the bank guarantee in 2008, the collapse of the property sector, the doing of so much damage to the country because of debt taken on to bail out the banking sector, the mess that was Anglo Irish Bank and the promissory notes debacle that we just managed to get ourselves out of, but we must not forget that we may not have investigated and sorted out all of the events that led to these problems. I have often said inside and outside this Chamber that this term of government should be used for a number of tasks, the most important of which is to ensure that what got the country into such a bad place, thereby affecting its people so harshly through unemployment, debt and all of the social, medical and psychological consequences attached therto, will not happen again. In doing so, we must ensure we not only reform the political system but also that what happened will never happen again. I refer to what occurred in the banking system, land speculation and rampant property speculation having become the dominant hegemonic model of the economy. There are a number of questions that a banking inquiry, in particular, would allow us to address.

Consider the role of the Irish Financial Services Regulatory Authority. Why was it so deferential when regulating financial services? Why was the system closer to a hand-in-hand system rather than an adversarial one, which is what one would expect from a regulator? One would not expect a softly softly approach but an approach stipulating rules that must be followed. Why was the Central Bank not aware of the risks? Why did it not have the knowledge, capability and power to analyse what was occurring in the economy, including the property sector, and the banks' balance sheets? Why was it not able to see that there was a problem? Why did we believe the problem with the banks in 2008 was one of liquidity rather than solvency? Why did we make that mistake? Why was the expertise not available to spot it? What was the role of the Department of Finance? We need to find answers to these questions. What was the attitude in the Department of Finance? Did we have the same issue with deferential leanings towards the banking sector? Was it that the banking sector could do no wrong because it was making so much money? Was the relationship too close? Was the expertise in the Department of Finance sufficient for an analysis of what happened?

We need to examine the crisis management of the former Government. What was going through the minds of our leaders, both political leaders and leaders in the Civil Service, before the bank guarantee? We have heard that in early 2008 a group was set up to think about the banking crisis and examine balance sheets, share prices, etc., yet a decision was not made on the banking crisis until September 2008. Apparently, we were on notice for so much time regarding the potential eventualities. Why did we not see what was happening? We need to find out about crisis management after the guarantee. There was a significant gap between the giving of the guarantee and the nationalisation of Anglo Irish Bank. Was this wise? Was it wise to have a bank that was, in many aspects, economically challenged and capable of causing so much damage to the economy left out of State hands during the window in question? The bank's management could have been involved in a practice that could have put the State's interests at risk. Why was this allowed to happen?

What banking culture could have caused the collapse of the economic model so violently in the first instance? Why were the banks lending so much money? Why was property the only issue? What was the role of external auditors who were supposed to be auditing the banks effectively? There are many matters to be examined. This Bill will facilitate that process. I very much commend it and hope it is passed and will soon be on the Statute Book.

See this speech in context