Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I start by paying tribute to Deputy Catherine Murphy on the work she has done over the last number of months in helping to bring this issue to the fore. This is my first opportunity to congratulate her on the record of the Dáil. There is no doubt that we would not be having this debate this evening were it not for her work. We would not have seen the commission of investigation being launched today by the Government. In the last ten to 12 days, we have seen very serious attacks on the use of privilege by Members of the Dáil. It is very important that it has been cleared up. I commend RTE and The Irish Timesfor going to court to clarify that it was not the court's intention at any stage to stifle the privilege of Dáil Members. It is interesting to see that the biggest media group in the State, Independent News and Media, did not deem it necessary to go to court to have that right established.

We all know the reason is that the group is largely owned by the individual who is the subject of the questions, Denis O'Brien, who is the reason we are here tonight.

I refer to Leaders' Questions today when the Taoiseach was asked why he showed a lack of leadership and did not defend the rights of Members of the Dáil to raise questions in the House when the situation was up in the air and we awaited clarification from the court. The Taoiseach's only response was that a recall of the Dáil would be to allow the Committee on Procedure and Privileges to decide whether the Member should be reprimanded for abusing the privilege rather than defending a Member's right to make statements and to represent the public interest in the House.

The reason we are here today is because of the lack of replies to parliamentary questions. Deputy Tom Fleming and other Members referred to Mr. Justice Hamilton's remarks with regard to the beef tribunal when he said that if parliamentary questions had been answered as openly in the Dáil as they were at the tribunal, there would have been no need for the tribunal. This is a very telling statement. I refer to the tenacity of Deputy Murphy who continued asking questions. Her 19 questions were followed by a freedom of information request before she discovered that the Department of Finance had serious misgivings about how IBRC was being managed and the deals it was doing. Those concerns were not being expressed and were not dealt with in replies to parliamentary questions. All Deputies submit questions to Departments and we should wonder whether we are getting answers. When I came to the House in 2011 it may have been naive of me to believe that parliamentary questions were a good way of getting information from Departments and of finding out what was happening within government and how decisions were made. However, one must question the answers we have all received over the past number of years. Some of us did not have the tenacity of Deputy Murphy to keep looking for answers. The House may have been misled on many other issues or we may have overlooked them or not appreciated the significance of the responses we received.

The Minister made a personal statement to make a series of corrections to contributions he made on behalf of the Department. I ask why this was a personal statement because when the Minister speaks in the House, he is representing his Department and the corporate body of the Department rather than his own personal interests. I would have thought that personal statements would relate solely to the personal matters of an individual. Why could the corrections to the record relating to the Department not be teased out further so that questions could be asked about the misleading answers that were given over a number of months? We discovered that the Department had the information and the minutes of the meeting to hand but it chose not to answer the questions. That is the very serious aspect of this debacle. The commission of investigation should examine the role of the Department by its acts of omission in misleading this House and its role in facilitating what was happening in IBRC. While it may have had concerns, I ask what was it doing about those concerns when these issues were arising. This needs to be investigated and dealt with.

There is no doubt that IBRC has worked very favourable dealings with certain individuals. It points to what is obvious to everybody that it depends on who one is in this country as to how one is dealt with. That is the case in all aspects of government business and public life. It is a very telling and sad reflection on the state of our country, of our nation and of our public bodies. An individual who has huge personal wealth and is deemed to have personal power and close links with the major Government party can get preferential and favourable treatment. A very wealthy individual can have a verbal arrangement with the CEO of a bank and have loan arrangements decided on the basis of that conversation. All he needs to do is to remind the bank's receiver of this conversation, even though I understand the former CEO has disputed the situation.

The commission of investigation will need to examine all the transactions to discover what other individuals and companies benefited from the largesse of the taxpayer by having their debts written off by means of favourable agreements and favourable interest rates. It has been shown that individuals and citizens who are struggling cannot even have a discussion with a bank about favourable terms. The banks will not talk to those people and they are left high and dry.

The commission of investigation will need to expose the web of conflicts of interest that permeate every aspect of business in this State. The Siteserv sale has highlighted that the businesses, companies, legal advisers and accountancy firms advised both parties to a sale. This is a complete conflict of interest. The companies should have excused themselves from that process and allowed another company to take their place. I would never advise that a solicitor should act for both parties in a transaction, yet this is what happens at the level of top business in this country. We hear all this talk of Chinese walls but the Chinese walls would have to be as big as the Great Wall of China to protect the interests of the State with regard to the practices in these businesses.

The commission of investigation should examine what has happened after the liquidation of IBRC, because significant decisions were made at that stage. I refer in particular to the sale of mortgages from the former IBRC. A total of 12,700 mortgages were sold off to venture capital funds - vulture capitalists, as they are commonly called. These mortgages had a face value of €1.8 billion but we do not know what the loss has been to the taxpayer because neither the Department nor the receiver will reveal it. We do not know the selling price of these mortgages. An examination would show how different people are treated in this society. From dealing with individual mortgage holders I know that some of them would have been in a position to buy out their mortgages from IBRC if permitted, but when they asked to do this, they were shot down by the receiver and their mortgages were packaged up and sold off to vulture funds who are now calling in the full face value of the amount owed on those mortgages. Those people were not given favourable agreements or treatment from IBRC because they were neither wealthy enough nor well connected.

See this speech in context