Dan Boyle (Green Party)

I agree with the motion. Questions have been asked as to whether the right methods of inquiry were being followed, whether the right questions were being asked and whether the right people were involved in the process. There is still dissatisfaction with individuals who fail to take responsibility for what happened and we all share that frustration and impatience. Nevertheless, the inquiry process has worked well. People have been identified who were not part of the clique which brought us to where we are. Some of them are from outside the State and are not part of what is loosely described as the golden circle. Patrick Honohan has been appointed to the Central Bank and Matthew Elderfield to the Office of the Financial Regulator. The report was commissioned from Klaus Regling and Max Watson. Now Peter Nyberg will head the commission of inquiry. The right approach has been taken and will pay dividends in providing a long-term analysis of why things went wrong and what we need to do to avoid repetition of them.

That said, I agree with Senator Twomey. If we are to restore public confidence we must also use the other methods available to us, such as the judicial system and the prosecution services, to identify the key individuals who were involved in these institutions and who made the decisions that brought us to where we are. I share Senator Ross's view that the impact of both the internal review of the Department of Finance and the commission of inquiry report itself will be in identifying individuals who are still in the system and who had a direct decision-making impact, whether through the provision of wrong information or in taking decisions that led to the State, through the taxpayer, picking up the tab. Those procedures still have to be put in place.

As a member of the Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service, I am confident that its element of the process, concentrating on policy decisions and the co-operation of those who were involved in the formulating of them, will work very well. It is important that the three facets - the commission of inquiry, the work of the joint committee and the internal review of the Department of Finance - take place within a very tight timeframe of six months to a year. This mitigates against the extension of the period to be examined, which Senator Ross proposes. If we keep extending the date we will make it difficult to complete the inquiries in that narrow timeframe. The Minister has been very accommodating in placing the nationalisation of Anglo Irish Bank as the key date in this process. We will learn more by having a definite date and waiting for the reports that arise from it.