Shane Ross (Independent)

I thank the Minister of State for coming to the House to explain this. I welcome the fact the commission is being set up. It is obviously required after the two earlier reports. There is a danger that we will have five reports in the same area fairly shortly, including the Honohan report and the Regling-Watson report. The Minister of State can correct me if I am wrong but there will be three inquiries going on. We will have this commission of inquiry, the policy inquiry and the inquiry into the Department of Finance, which is an awful lot. I am not sure whether they will overlap.

I worry about some of the limitations of these inquiries. The terms of reference are very important and are quite confusing when one looks at them. My understanding is that a very sensible concession was made at the Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service last Monday in response to a motion tabled by Deputy Burton asking for an extension of the time. The Minister very sensibly extended the time to the date of the nationalisation of Anglo Irish Bank.

I worry about that. One of the problems with the last report was that there was a limit on the time until the end of September 2008. A legitimate complaint at the time was that it did not cover important matters such as the Anglo Irish Bank-Irish Life and Permanent deal, a few other deals and the Sean FitzPatrick deal in which he moved his loans. This will cover that area and other very sensitive areas, which we have not covered before. That is very mature.

It will also cover the actual process of the nationalisation of Anglo Irish Bank, which will be fascinating and useful.

Why does it stop there? I am not being pedantic. I am interested in what the Minister of State has to say about this. He said one never knows when to stop when one is holding inquiries, and I accept that. However, stopping there is not necessarily a good point. The Minister of State will be aware, as will all Members of the House, that what had been going on in the banks into which we are inquiring did not stop on 15 January 2009. It did not stop on 15 February 2009 or even on 15 February 2010. It has not stopped yet.

The evidence for this is what Frank Daly, chairman of NAMA, said this week. The NAMA business plan was revised because the banks had been telling lies, certainly until early this year. Frank Daly said we are not 100% certain we have sorted the problem out yet. He said we have got the majority in line but we are not 100% certain of that. The result of the banks' lies is that the NAMA projected profit, which is fantasy, has been turned into a loss. I do not believe the figures one way or another. I never did and no one should. However, the projection went from a profit of €4.8 billion to a possible loss of €800 million. This was because the banks had been telling lies about what percentage of their loans were being serviced. They were giving these lies to NAMA. NAMA was accepting them and making business projections on the basis of them. The figure has now been revised from 40% to 25%, which means the projections have gone west.

Frank Daly said the banks had been misleading NAMA and getting away with it for a long period. If this was going on, we need inquiries. We need to find out how they continued to be able to do this. Right up to a couple of months ago they were pulling the wool over the eyes of NAMA as well, but our inquiry will stop on 15 January 2009. I have no objection in detail to this but I object to it in principle. The inquiry should probably have no time limit on it. One must restrict its terms somewhere because we do not want it to be like the Mahon tribunal and go everywhere. I see the problems we will have if we do that. However, if we restrict the commission's time, we restrict its pursuit of the themes and details, which are so important. Will the Minister of State explain why the inquiry stops at that point? I do not want him to say one must draw the line somewhere. I want him to explain why it stops there and why the inquiry cannot at least pursue a line it is following beyond that date.

Patrick Honohan did that in his report. He went beyond his terms of reference, as far as I can remember. The Minister may not be grateful to him for that but that is what makes him so useful. He stands up to those who appoint him and does not say exactly what they want him to hear. He is a wonderful appointment. I do not know anything about Mr. Nyberg but I accept what Senator MacSharry says about his bona fides. Let us accept him on face value, not criticise him and hope he is the sort of guy we are looking for. He is an outsider, which is tremendous. In that respect, the Minister of State and the Minister have dealt very well with the area of appointing outsiders. The appointment of people to the Central Bank, to the inquiries and to the regulator's office have been excellent. I will not say the same about bankers but in that area things have been done extremely well. Some very good, although unfortunately mostly foreign, appointments have been made.

I have a reservation and a worry that the restriction to that date means the inquiry is restricted on up-to-date things. It also restricts inquiry into people who are in positions of power. That probably plays into the pitch of the golden circle.

Am I limited in time?