Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I should apologise on behalf of our party leader, Deputy Micheál Martin, who wished to be here. There are certain points I need to make on his behalf. I am somewhat compromised because, as the Government Chief Whip knows, as a member of the CPP I have myself been party to the discussions which have brought us to this particular point. At issue here is the way in which this Standing Order must be adopted. I have personally agreed that it should be adopted. It needs to be adopted to facilitate the continuation of the inquiry. However, what is at issue is the manner in which the inquiry will proceed on foot of the necessary amendment to the Central Bank Act, having regard to EU directives, and the variance between the public expectation of the banking inquiry and the reality of the process from here on in.

My leader spoke about the intentions of the Standing Order last week. I wish to reiterate his genuine concerns. He stated that the Standing Order was consequent on the passing of the Central Bank (Amendment) Bill 2014 to facilitate the banking inquiry. There is a widespread public expectation that this will be open and transparent. The Act states: "Any member of either House of the Oireachtas to whom confidential information is provided under subsection (5) and who fails to comply with the provisions of professional secrecy referred to in subsection (6) in respect of that information may be subject to the sanction of the House of which the person is a member in accordance with rules and standing orders made by that House." The Standing Order is quite severe. As Deputy Martin stated last week, he has received legal advice that confirms that the Standing Order is very restrictive on the members of the committee in terms of the sanctions they may incur if they are judged to have breached the Act in terms of receiving confidential information from the Central Bank and breaching their duty of professional secrecy. Given that the inquiry is meant to open up everything in the Central Bank documentation on corporations and individuals, it seems an extraordinary restriction. Even though the Standing Order was agreed by the CPP, on legal advice it in fact creates a process for dealing with breaches of those professional secrecy obligations by Members and provides for penalties where Members do not comply with the requirements of the law. The Standing Order cannot be moved until the Bill is signed, yet this issue was not discussed when the substantive Bill was going through the Houses. It has become a latter-day requirement due to national and EU law on national secrecy.

It is unfortunate that the approach of the Government to the banking inquiry is so piecemeal and it also exposes the fact that the model of the banking inquiry the Government selected is the wrong one. We need a far more transparent inquiry. We need to be transparent about what is allowable and what is not allowable. The public has not got a clue about what is happening at present. We need to let the public be aware that the names of certain personnel and documentation will not be made public via the banking inquiry.

It is therefore not an inquiry that will be open, as I understand it, because of the restrictions placed on it. It indicates that we are in an area of legal difficulty. There is a quagmire arising here. The information the public might expect to get from a critical player in all of this - the Central Bank - is going to be protected, as of necessity it would appear or we would not get any information at all. However, it will be protected by a series of EU directives. This in turn has required us to amend our Central Bank Act which in turn requires the House to look at Standing Orders which also must be amended or no information at all will be provided. What we are saying here is that there is a big divergence between the public expectation of what will emerge from the banking inquiry and the reality of the limited access to information that will be available as a result of the constraints placed on the banking inquiry, emanating it would appear in large part from EU directives.

We have some political difficulty with that, which derives from the fact that at no point in the initiation of this legislation or in the debate about the banking inquiry was it signalled that this unique degree of protection and secrecy would apply to the Central Bank, its staff, those who have contracted to it and indeed its dealings with any incorporated or unincorporated body. That presents a real difficulty. Given where the banking inquiry is going and the work that has been undertaken, I accept that the Central Bank (Amendment) Act 2015 had to be passed to enable the inquiry to complete its work and have any engagement at all with the Central Bank. While I have concerns about the strict nature of the constraints envisaged in these Standing Orders, I agree that some amendment to Standing Orders needs to be passed.

See this speech in context