Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to have an opportunity to say a few words on the banking inquiry report. As a group, we embarked on a journey in June 2014 when our first meeting took place. In November 2014, the Oireachtas concluded the terms of reference which were given to the inquiry team. The initial deadline for the conclusion of the report was November 2015, one year later, but we ended up getting an extension of time. As such, it has been an 18 months process and journey for us. At the outset, I acknowledge the work of the Chairman, Deputy Ciarán Lynch, to whom I pay tribute for the manner in which he chaired the private and public meetings. He had to invest a great deal of additional time as Chairman to deal with various issues and to ensure that the inquiry ran as smoothly as possible. It is a personal achievement for Deputy Lynch to have chaired the inquiry so well. I also acknowledge the work of all of my colleagues on the committee, many of whom took on significant additional duties in the last couple of months, including drafting and redrafting sections and working to bring the report to a conclusion. I thank and acknowledge my parliamentary assistant, Morgan Shelley, without whom I could not have given as much time as I did to the inquiry along with everybody else. I acknowledge the work of the investigators and, of course, the legal advisors and all of those who supported the work of the inquiry in the background.

It is an achievement to have completed a report. There were certainly times in recent months when I was not sure we would get this over the line. Having concluded the work and looking at the finished product, it was an achievement to conclude our work and have a finished report. The constraints in the 2013 legislation have been articulated and are dealt with comprehensively in Volume 2. Whoever forms part of the next Government and has the privilege of being in the next Oireachtas will, I hope, examine the recommendations in the report with a view to implementing them to improve the legislation which is in place. I remain true to the view I expressed at the very beginning of the process over a year and a half ago that a non-political inquiry would have been preferable. I am not going to change my mind on that at this stage. That is why my colleagues and I in Fianna Fáil advocated a Leveson style inquiry. Whether we like it or not, politicians were being inquired into in effect and the inquiry was, by its very nature, inherently political. As such, it would have been better if it had been conducted by a truly impartial person with adequate resources. We need to revisit the Tribunals of Inquiry Bill 2005 which is still sitting on the Order Paper and has not been concluded. It needs to be enacted as quickly as possible.

As Deputy Kieran O'Donnell said, all of our work in terms of receiving testimony took place in public. Getting people before the inquiry who had not said a single word in public as regards their roles in the different organisations was in itself a public service. Certainly, it has added to the body of knowledge we all have about the banking crisis. People will make up their own minds having read the report. The truth is that many people had already made up their own minds as to what led to Ireland's banking crisis and how it was responded to. The important point is that we have enhanced the overall understanding of the banking crisis and brought many pertinent new pieces of information into the public domain, which is very important. It must be acknowledged that we have not told the complete story because we have been unable to. The reality is that we were only able to scratch at the surface of the story of Anglo Irish Bank, a bank which will ultimately cost the State in the region of €30 billion. Any inquiry into Ireland's banking collapse which did not hear testimony from people like David Drumm and Sean FitzPatrick is clearly not a complete body of work. We all acknowledge that as members of the inquiry. However, significant new information came into the public domain and is now on the public record. There is a great deal of information and documentation which has now been made available on the Internet in Volume 3 and which will provide fertile ground for journalists, academics, researchers and future policy makers who can go through it all to tease out further points we were not able to cover in the detail we would have liked. The time we had was limited. I acknowledge that having a series of crisis meetings towards the end was not ideal and undoubtedly sapped some public confidence in the inquiry. All of that will be forgotten in the fullness of time, however, and the inquiry report will stand the test of time. It is there as a permanent record of the work we have done.

It is a great pity that somebody who could have contributed so much to the work of the banking inquiry, the late Brian Lenihan, was not able to do so. He would have had much to say and the inquiry would have been far richer had we been able to hear from Brian Lenihan in the course of our work. We got some sense of the immense pressure he must have been under. It is something I thought about personally in the course of the inquiry when the full extent of what was going on the background in the lead up to September 2008, the nationalisation of Anglo and, ultimately, the bailout programme in November 2010. He must have been under the most extraordinary pressure as a human being. None of us will ever know whether the pressure and stress he was under contributed to the illness to which he eventually succumbed, but it would not surprise me if that was the case. From the point of view of the inquiry, it was all the poorer that Brian Lenihan was not there to tell his story and to answer many of the questions. One of the key questions was whether Anglo should have been nationalised. I question at times whether it would have made any great difference if that was done at the end of September 2008. Ultimately, money would only have been saved if someone was not repaid. Who would that have been? No one is suggesting it should have been depositors. People suggest senior bondholders, but would that have been permitted? What would the consequences have been? No one, had they known then that rescuing Anglo was going to cost in the region of €30 billion, would have embarked on that course of action. I do not believe that anyone would have ultimately made that decision.

On the banks themselves, a great deal has been covered. The fact that they simply did not know the full exposure of individual borrowers to whom they were giving loans is remarkable. There was clearly a major failure at board level across a number of the institutions. There was a failure at so many levels across different organisations. The role of the financial regulator - the Central Bank - is comprehensively dealt with. There was a serious shortcoming in terms of the preparation for the crisis that struck us in September 2008 despite serious warning signs and alarm bells ringing. As the Chairman has said, there was no deep dive into the financial institutions in the course of 2008 which was a very clear failing. There is no evidence that such a deep dive would have provided information that would have led to a different course of action, but having the information would certainly have been very helpful. There was also, of course, the failure at the level of the Department of Finance, at Government level, which has been well documented in terms of pro-cyclical fiscal policy and the underlying deficit which was subsequently exposed when the property and construction industries collapsed entirely. The ECB and its role is also covered. I have no doubt, having sat through all of the hearings, that the actions of the ECB added billions of euro to the ultimate cost of rescuing the Irish banking system. I have no doubt whatsoever that was the case. All of the evidence is on the record to back that up.

It was clear from our work that there was an intolerance of dissenting voices. If we are to learn anything as a country and an Oireachtas, it is to be more tolerant of those who hold contrary views. We could all improve in this regard. There were some dissenting voices during the so-called boom years. While they were certainly in a small minority, they were strong and much of what they said has been proven true. We should learn from that.

If the work of our inquiry is taken seriously and carried forward into the next Oireachtas, it should be taken to the next step. Implementing our recommendations would reduce, but not eliminate, the risk of a future crisis afflicting this country.

See this speech in context