Shane Ross (Independent)

I wish to add a few words to concentrate the minds on what happened last night. I gather that the Labour Party spokesman on finance has asked for a meeting of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service on Monday to question the Financial Regulator and maybe others. This House should support that call, even though it is for Monday. Senator Healy Eames touched upon this point. What is happening here is a complete and utter collapse of regulation in this country. It is not just an isolated incident. What the chairman of Anglo Irish Bank was doing has been going on for eight years. It did not just happen yesterday. Senator O'Toole touched on it when he asked what were the auditors, Ernst & Young, doing. Had they not issued a warning about this and, if they did, was it ignored? It is not just the auditors who are involved in this, it is the loan committees, the audit committees, the board and everybody else.

A serious question must be asked of our old friend, the Financial Regulator. It is absolutely plain that the Financial Regulator knew about this matter much earlier this year. It appears that he knew about it in January, and it is now December. What has the Financial Regulator been doing? The only reason this has emerged now is that the €87 million in loans must appear in the accounts to be published in the next few days. Credit is due to the Minister for Finance that it has emerged because the chairman and some other people from Anglo Irish Bank met him on Tuesday and this issue arose then. If that had not happened, we would not have known about this at all and it would probably go on for many more years.

Financial regulation in this country is a joke. The Financial Regulator is ultimately responsible for that. The Financial Regulator has known about this since January and apparently has done absolutely nothing to insist——