Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will take ten minutes and my colleague, the Minister of State, will take a different slot. I am pleased to make a contribution to this debate and thank my colleague, the Minister for Finance, for sharing time.

At the outset, I congratulate Deputy Catherine Murphy for her work on this issue. As the Minister responsible for the reform of the freedom of information legislation, I am pleased to see it used in a constructive fashion. The public interest will be better served for having this debate. I also congratulate my colleague, the Minister for Finance, for the speedy action he has taken on this matter from the point at which it was first brought to his attention. When concerns were raised with him, following the approval by the board of IBRC of the Siteserv deal, his officials conducted a review of the transaction. Following that, as he outlined, he met with the chairman of IBRC and sought his assurances that the transaction had been conducted in the best interests of the bank and ultimately the taxpayer. The then chairman of IBRC provided those assurances.

Under the previous reporting arrangement, IBRC was not required to report on individual asset disposals. There was no monetary threshold that would trigger mandatory consultation with the parent Department, the Department of Finance. There is nothing inherently suspicious about this; it was the arrangement that Fianna Fáil put in place in relation to these matters. The IBRC board and executives were in the business of conducting an orderly run down of the bank. That was their job. Their job was to dispose of the asset at the best price and conditions for the taxpayer. Indeed, the interests of the bank and the taxpayer were apparently allied in this regard.

The Minister for Finance made the critical decision at the end of March 2012 to alter the reporting arrangements and to put in place a different one to that put in place by the previous Government, to allow for the first time for the Department of Finance to have more direct supervisory control over IBRC activity than was the case up to that point. To facilitate the effective working of this arrangement he appointed a senior official from his Department to IBRC to provide additional advice to the bank, and the official remained in place until the bank was finally liquidated in 2013.

Whether the party opposite likes it or not, some humility is required, and it would be appropriate for it to acknowledge that the new framework initiated by the Minister, Deputy Noonan, constitutes a considerable improvement in the accountability framework that it put in place, that it is now criticising, when it was previously in government. In summary, the Minister's decision constituted the appropriate response to any concerns that may have arisen in relation to IBRC disposals and the Minister took action promptly. I wish to be clear because there is much innuendo enmeshed with some of the contributions presented to the House, that it is not to suggest that IBRC did anything wrong. Any decision it made is capable of being second guessed now. At the end of the day what we are discussing here is a distressed asset. Nobody is suggesting that the board of IBRC could have recovered anything approaching full value from Siteserv as a company either as a going concern or by way of disposal. Furthermore, we will never know the outcome of any alternative course of action because no alternative course of action was pursued. The Department of Finance, in the material released under FOI, is clear on that point. Indeed, from what I have heard, this particular issue is thankfully notable in so far as no serious charge is being made of improper conduct around any individual or body. Perhaps the Deputies opposite would clarify that.

Hindsight may well be 20:20 vision, but that should not blind us to the difficult position in which the State and IBRC found themselves in 2012. From the relative comfort of our greatly improved financial position in recent times, we can forget how problematic and precarious our position was as recently as 2012. There is also a case to be made in that what the material released under FOI to Deputy Murphy indicates is a proper and healthy scepticism and challenge being displayed by the parent Department, namely, the Department of Finance, in relation to one of the bodies under its auspices.

Members should bear in mind that a committee of this House is currently meeting in inquiry mode to examine the level and appropriateness of scrutiny afforded to the banking sector during the so-called bubble years. I am heartened to see public servants - officials in the Department of Finance - being rigorous in the protection of the public interest. As we have been informed, the Minister for Finance and the Government have now asked the special liquidator to examine IBRC transactions and have appointed a former, much respected High Court judge to preside over any potential conflicts of interest that might arise.

At the heart of the matter appears to be the point at which there is a divide between the Government and Opposition. Let me say this: the Minister for Finance's decision is guided by the need to have a speedy process to get to the facts concerning these transactions. The special liquidators and the people he has appointed are the way to do that, because they are the ones in the right place to have speedy access to the data.

As the Minister repeated tonight, he has not ruled out any further action following the production of the report, and indeed has already undertaken to provide it speedily to the committees of the House for them to take what action they choose. In addition, the Minister has committed to publish the report and make it available to all. As I have indicated, Judge O'Neill has been appointed to oversee this entire process.

The contention of the Opposition, which I believe to be made in good faith, is that a commission of investigation should be appointed. Such criticism is somewhat disingenuous. Members will recall that commissions of investigation were established in 2004 as an alternative to what proved to be the costly and time consuming tribunals of inquiry which dominated public life for more than a decade. They were a good idea at the time and constitute an improvement on the previous position. Nonetheless, commissions of investigation remain legal processes and take a lot of time. In fact, if issues were to be hidden, we would probably go that route because as we have seen from previous inquiries, they would be pushed into such a timeframe that they would be unlikely to impact on-----

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