Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

“This was a democratic revolution at the ballot box...The chasm opened between people and government has to be rebuilt.” Those were the words of the Taoiseach on the night of the general election in 2011. Tonight we can officially declare that revolution dead. Those who were handed responsibility for seeing it through have failed rather spectacularly and the commission of inquiry being established will serve as a post mortem on the Taoiseach’s 2011 revolution. The democratic revolution died from the start in every Department. As Deputy Shortall and several other speakers on this side of the House said, because this is where most of the speakers are, this Minister and his colleagues do not provide answers to parliamentary questions and do not give information at Question Time. Today we have what the Government sees as holding itself to account, a series of statements that do not allow for questions. We have had the same on Aer Lingus and many other issues, day-long statements where the business gets cleared, a smoke screen of accountability with no questions answered.

I pay tribute to Deputy Catherine Murphy because she has shown all Deputies, particularly those on the Opposition benches, that we must persevere if we are to obtain answers. Deputies who table parliamentary questions frequently do not get the answers they are looking for from many Ministers, regardless of how tightly they frame the question. This may not be the fault of Ministers, but they sign off on the replies, the authors of which go to great lengths to deliberately not answer the question asked. In this case, the Minister believed that Deputy Murphy would go away and he would get away with it. It is to the Deputy's credit that she did not go away, because we are having this debate as a result of her intervention and the work she has done.

Credit is also due to my party leader, Deputy Micheál Martin, who has done a great deal of work on this issue in recent days. He took on vested interests in media and radio broadcasts when he challenged people who had been sent out to speak on behalf of some of the individuals involved in this case and in doing so threw around names and allegations and failed to address the substantive issue. Deputy Martin deserves credit for standing up to that behaviour.

It is very disappointing that, during a nine-day period when the privilege of the House and the responsibility that comes with that were under attack, Members who used this privilege to impart important political information in a responsible manner were not defended by the father of the House. The longest-serving Member of the House has a particular responsibility to the traditions and privileges of the House, yet he went silent when one of the most basic requirements of parliamentarians came under threat. It is to the Taoiseach's shame that he would not stand up and defend parliamentary privilege and instead effectively hid for nine days without commenting. He has yet to give a substantive defence of his position during that time.

The appointment of the chairman of the commission of inquiry will be very important. The Government must appoint a judge with experience of the commercial courts, one who understands the practices involved in such complex transactions and systems. Unless somebody with experience in managing these matters is appointed to head up the commission of inquiry, it will be weakened from the start, notwithstanding my belief that it will get nowhere in any case.

The Minister is a long-serving Member of the Oireachtas. If he has any respect for the House, he must ensure the commission of inquiry furnishes an interim report. By their absence from the Chamber in the hours since this debate commenced, it is clear that many of the Minister's colleagues hope and assume that the report will not be published until after the general election, at which point we will be told, as we were when the Moriarty report was published, that everything will change. The report will be sent to various Departments, the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement and nothing will be done. If the Minister believes he is doing the right thing - although I am not convinced he believes that - he will provide for the publication of an interim report in September. This is not too much to ask, given the level of resources he is placing at the disposal of the report team.

What do various people following this debate think? What do customers of Anglo Irish Bank, the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation and other banks who adhered to their loan agreements or lost their businesses after being pursued by the banks think when they hear some of the contributions made in this debate and learn of some of the information that is entering the public domain? What do those who have been waiting for 18 months for the Government to extend the terms of the credit guarantee scheme, to allow them to use the scheme and stop banks from closing down their businesses, think when they see the extraordinary lengths to which the Government has gone to try to stop information from coming out? What do people who have lost their homes or businesses following bank foreclosures think when they see the details of this case emerge? Where is the democratic revolution for them? It is nowhere to be found. What has been exposed and dragged out in this Chamber though this debate is that there is one law for the rich, the elite of this country, and another law for everyone else. While some people lost their businesses and suffered the strain of recent years, others appear to have been given carte blancheto do as they pleased.

If the Minister, I or anybody else were to argue that we had a verbal agreement with our bank to do X, Y or Z, we would be laughed out of court and would lose our business, home or job. Banks consistently tell Deputies making representations on behalf of constituents that agreements must be in writing. In the case of businesses whose loans have been sold to investment funds, even where they have a written agreement, the purchasers of the loans have sought time and again to use the terms of their contracts to breach the loan terms and get their hands on important assets. No verbal agreement is good enough to extend the terms of such loans, and no pat on the back, handshake or nod and wink was good enough to prevent a large number of people from losing their assets.

What must former employees of Anglo Irish Bank who were not involved in management and in cutting deals think? Many of them are still waiting, as creditors, for redundancy payments and other payments due to them. What do they think when they see the deals that were done to suit management and particular customers of the bank? These deals were done when the bank had public interest directors. After what we have heard this evening, even before the commission of investigation commences, how are we to define the role of public interest directors?

Many of the questions that arise from this debate need to be directed at the Department. The Minister must stand back and examine these issues. The reorganisation of the Department of Finance and the decision to place its expenditure and public service elements in the new Department of Public Expenditure and Reform were meant to prevent a repetition of the types of decision that preceded the economic crisis and free up one side of the Department for banking, taxation and revenue functions, while shifting expenditure and public service reform functions to a new Department. Despite his having a much smaller workload than many of his predecessors, the events we are discussing occurred on the Minister's watch. That one of the Government's most important relationships in the area of banking policy was allowed to deteriorate to such an extent, that so many balls were dropped in this relationship and that the Minister has put up his hands and stated he was not aware of or did not understand the full extent of the deterioration is not good enough. As the person who is in charge of a Department, including a specific relationship that had important consequences for the economy, he should have been on top of every aspect of this relationship. He should have had Alan Dukes in his office every month to try to understand what was taking place in IBRC, given that Mr. Dukes was the public interest director and it is the Minister's job to protect the public interest. For some reason, however, the relationship deteriorated to the point that the Department did not appear to believe it was sufficiently important to record minutes. The Minister was hung out to dry by statements he made to the Dáil on the basis of advice he had received. None of this reflects a functioning relationship and it is not good enough. The Minister must ensure that whoever dropped the ball and ensured that information was not given and write-downs not accounted for must pay with his or her job. Many others outside the political system have paid with their jobs as the banks closed down their businesses or foreclosed on their homes. They did not have the relationship with their banks that some people appear to have had with theirs.

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