Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not know whether I can sum up 18 months of participation in a banking inquiry in ten minutes, but I will try to add to what its other members have stated. I thank Deputy Ciarán Lynch for the major effort that he put into the inquiry. When the public hearings began, we as members had to take a step back from the process on the investigative team's side to focus on the public sessions, but the Chairman had to focus on those sessions while running the back room. It was a significant task, one that involved extra background work on those days when the inquiry did not sit, of which people who tuned in on television or read about the inquiry in newspapers may not have been aware. Deputy Ciarán Lynch carried that burden on his shoulders admirably.

I thank the secretariat's staff and the legal investigators. I got to know some of the latter well in the course of the report's final preparation when I was based in the inquiry's offices for a brief time. They were a great team with which to work. I thank my parliamentary assistant for the banking inquiry, Mr. Darragh McGreal, and my office, which also helped. Much work was done by everyone. I thank my colleagues on the inquiry for everything that they did, including putting up with me. I might have been a bit schizophrenic at some of the private meetings depending on my mood and where I believed we were going. It was great to work with everyone all the way to the end. I have some nice memories of those moments when we were not in public session and worked together as colleagues on a big project. I am glad to have them.

I also thank my constituents for their patience for the past 18 months in allowing me to do this work and be a parliamentarian. I appreciate it. I wanted to be on the inquiry. What happened was part of the reason that I came home and got involved in politics. I sought to be on the inquiry while I was a member of the Committee of Public Accounts. Deputy O'Donnell and I prepared the report on how one might conduct an inquiry. I was privileged to be appointed to it by the Taoiseach, for which I thank him. I was appointed to the inquiry at a time when I was having questions about the effectiveness of the Oireachtas. People have such questions, but the inquiry restored my faith in the Chamber, the people elected to it and the work that we do. I underwent a great deal of professional development.

My view on a Leveson-style inquiry was similar to Deputy Michael McGrath's until we started our work. The elected representatives of the Oireachtas had to do this. If we did not, it would have been an abdication of our responsibilities and a loss. It was political at times, but that was minimised. We were not there to land a blow for the media. As members of the media would always tell us privately after a meeting, we did not lay a hand on a witness, but that was not why we were there. As some members of the public might say, no one is going to jail. We were not there to replace the courts either. We were there as a group of parliamentarians to do a serious piece of work and get on the record the testimony and evidence of the key people involved during the crisis period. Let others judge. We did this away from the fauxtheatrics that we sometimes see in the Chamber. I had no doubt about the ability of each inquiry member to leave the party jersey at the door during the public sessions and do the work professionally. Good work was done, good questions were asked and good evidence is there for those who want to take the time to read the transcripts.

I will make a recommendation on the future of inquiries. We should focus our efforts on the public sessions, compelling the right witnesses, collecting documentation, examining and cross-examining. Of course there must be reports, but they should be approached as additions to the work, not as attempts at summations. If we are being honest with ourselves, this is where we started encountering difficulties. We finished the public sessions and went off to try to summarise everything, but it was too much. We had taken in more witnesses than we had intended, we had hundreds of hours of evidence and there were 500,000 pages of documentation. Never could one do all of that justice in 400 pages. A future inquiry should view a report as an addition rather than a summation, in particular given the constitutional constraints that we face. There is no lack of will on the Parliament's part to give more powers to an inquiry or make it more effective. Rather, the Constitution determines what we do. We must be cognisant of that.

I acknowledge Senator O'Keeffe's work in getting the report published. It would not have happened otherwise. Everyone played a role in the final weeks and a heroic effort was made, but the Senator got this over the line. I congratulate and thank her. A fine report, it has been published across three volumes. As Senator Barrett stated at a press conference yesterday, future PhDs will come from our work. I hope so. It will not be academic for its own sake. Rather, this will be an opportunity for people to drill down outside the constraints of a Dáil term or anything else and draw up further lessons and recommendations as well as more truths that we must face openly and honestly.

The failing of the banks was massive. After all our work, I wonder whether they have learned their lesson, in particular when I see some of the current advertisements. This is a worrying development. As the Chairman mentioned, there is a belief that things are different this time. One of the greatest failings of human nature is that we always think that this time it will be different and special, only to make the same mistakes. It is a failure of imagination, as a playwright put it. The problem during the crisis was the failure to comprehend what might be happening. When dissenting voices were raised, they were ushered away because people did not want to hear them. We could not imagine the kind of catastrophe that was coming. This trend continued during the crisis and the attempts to assess the real damage to banks' portfolios, whether they needed bailouts, the requisite fiscal adjustment, the necessary interest rates, whether there should be burden sharing, etc. When we view banking behaviour today, perhaps we can see this continuing. That is a concern.

As Deputy Michael McGrath mentioned, there are not as many recommendations as we would have liked because of the constraints on the report, but it cannot sit on a shelf. Too much time, money and resources have been invested and good recommendations made. They may not be all of the recommendations that we need, but they should be implemented. That will fall to the next Government, whoever that may be. If I am re-elected to the House and have the opportunity to serve again, finding out what has been done with the recommendations and findings of the banking inquiry will be a bugbear of mine and a regular question to all officials and authorities. There are key recommendations. For example, the Central Bank's enforcement division has to appear before the Oireachtas committee. Let us make the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council directly responsible to the Oireachtas. Let us get independent oversight of the banking function in the Department of Finance. Let us have a review of NAMA when its work is done. Let us examine how the National Treasury Management Agency, NTMA, operates and what powers the Minister should or should not have over it. All of these recommendations should be examined. The inquiry gives us the impetus to do so, which I hope will carry through to the next Administration and every future Deputy. As we start to plan for the future following the economy's recovery, the duty will fall to the 158 people elected to the House to scrutinise and pay attention to detail to a degree that was not the case previously.

A large part of what I wanted to do on the inquiry was examine the role of the Oireachtas and how the structure of its system might have failed to act as an adequate brake or check on Government behaviour. This has formed a great deal of the work that I have done in the House to date. We need to give space and motivation to parliamentarians to examine legislation, ask difficult questions, stay at committee meetings for long hours, chase up leads and go into detail. Currently, the system does not give us this opportunity. Many recommendations have been made across the parties as to how we can improve the Parliament and ensure that future finance committees, independent budget oversight offices, budget scrutiny committees and so forth can hold future Governments to the fire on key details. The previous Government had a disregard for the Parliament, which was part of the reason I joined the Dáil, but I do not want to move into the political space in this debate. These lessons must be taken on board for the next Dáil.

We were not able to tie together parts of the inquiry in the report as we might have liked.

Others may be able to do that. As a committee, we were bound by very specific rules. It was always curious to note the distance placed between officialdom and the NTMA at key moments in the crisis. The NTMA was not placing deposits in Anglo Irish Bank but was made do so. The NTMA was not represented on the domestic standing group in the initial stages. It seems the NTMA was fully aware of the intended approach of the Government when it emerged there was a systemic crisis. The NTMA was not involved in the negotiations on burden sharing at the 11th hour. The NTMA was making calculations as to what might be achieved on burden sharing that seemed to be at odds with what the Department of Finance was pursuing at the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011. That stood out for me as a point of interest. The NTMA, as an institution, is important; it is the nation's banker. It acquitted itself excellently during the crisis through getting us back into the bond markets and back on our feet. We cannot let any kind of institutional bias that may exist or have existed continue.

See this speech in context