Seanad debates

Wednesday, 27 January 2016

10:30 am

Photo of Marc MacSharryMarc MacSharry (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We also welcome Mr. Esmond Birnie to the House.

Today the anticipated banking inquiry report will be launched, and I wish to be afforded a brief moment to say a few words about it. We will have the opportunity tomorrow evening to debate the outcome of the report in the House but I wish to say at the outset that I was glad to have the opportunity to be involved in it and to work with Senator O'Keeffe, Senator Michael D'Arcy and Senator Barrett. I thank specifically my own colleagues, Senator Bradford and Senator Norris, for their support for my nomination to participate in the inquiry. At the time - not to open old wounds - we had an unseemly issue in the House where there was an attempt to have a different membership of the committee from that determined by the committee of selection. Over the last two years or so the people on the inquiry have worked very hard in trying to produce today's report, which, it must be said, was done against a backdrop of an Act that was totally inadequate. I hope that the Houses and the next administration in particular will take on board the many recommendations of the report in the context of what needs to be done to ensure that no inquiry is hampered in the way that this one has been over the course of the last number of years in terms of its ability to make findings, its investigative abilities and so on.

It is worth noting that no Member of either House wore his or her political jersey in the inquiry. However, from a Fianna Fáil perspective, in advance of the inquiry, we called for it to be established in the manner of the Leveson inquiry in the UK, free from the electoral cycle, which, as we all know, ultimately played a part in the somewhat rushed finish to the banking inquiry's work. Notwithstanding all of the difficulties relating to the process, the trials going on elsewhere which limited the capacity of the inquiry to carry out its investigative work and the restrictions of the Act itself-----

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