Lucinda Creighton (Dublin South East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the changes to Standing Orders in regard to the creation of the banking inquiry. The "perception of bias" test, as part of these Standing Orders, is a welcome innovation in how we do our business in the Dáil and the wider Oireachtas. The onus of this test is on the actual appointed member of the committee to excuse themselves in the event of the perception of bias, which will certainly test the honour of many of our Members.

Fianna Fáil tells us that the banking inquiry is an election ploy on the part of the Government in order to remind the general public of the role that party had in arriving at the worst financial crisis ever in modern history. In September 2012, the Central Bank Governor, Professor Patrick Honohan, said that an inquiry was not necessary and that any information relevant to his brief that could be covered by any potential Oireachtas inquiry is known to him and has already been released. However, I believe it is the Taoiseach's words which should ring the loudest in the minds of all of the Members who will participate and have the task of running this inquiry, when he said: "The objective should be to determine, without fear or favour, and with dispassion and integrity, all of the...facts...that led to the collapse of the banking sector". If the members of this inquiry act truthfully to this objective, this House can and will bring credibility to its work and pride to our Parliament, a pride that has been lacking, quite frankly, for many decades. Indeed, as Deputy Kelleher said, this should be the absolute standard to which all committees, not just the banking inquiry, should do their business. From what I can glean, the general public are sick to death of grandstanding by Deputies, which does absolutely nothing to change or improve public policy or to advance the public interest, which should be the core of everything we do in this House.

The media and the legal system are already lining up to scoff at the idea that those who have a democratic mandate from the people they serve have the intellectual capacity, or the principled desire, to fulfil the genuine objective of finding facts rather than creating headlines. This is a real opportunity to prove those naysayers wrong and to restore some confidence in the political system. Therefore, whether or not Fianna Fail will be damaged by an inquiry into events that occurred surrounding its time in office should not be a consideration for Members of this House.

With the greatest respect to the Governor of the Central Bank, his own view that all information has been revealed equally serves as no justification not to hold a banking inquiry. The reality is that we still do not know many of the facts that led to the collapse of the banking sector, for example, the dissenting voices on the night of the guarantee, board members' understanding and knowledge of property risk exposure or how the bonus culture incentivised reckless lending. These are three major subjects that have yet to be addressed in public or understood fully. The impact of bonuses, and understanding the damage they did, is more important now than ever, particularly when we read today that AIB has privately discussed with the Department of Finance the return of bonuses in all but name. In phraseology that George Orwell would be proud of, the news agency Bloomberg reported that AIB were considering the return of so-called "executive incentives", in other words, a return to the bonus culture that many of us believe contributed to the banking crisis.

Let us a have a full and frank inquiry to understand these facts before we walk blindly back into the same flawed decisions that brought this country to its knees. I genuinely hope the Members of the Oireachtas fulfil this mandate and serve the entire nation, not vested interests, narrow political point-scoring and posturing.

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