FF Accused Of Playing Politics With Banking Inquiry

Fine Gael Cork North Central Deputy and member of the Finance Committee, Dara Murphy, has said the strategy being adopted by Fianna Fáil in respect of a banking inquiry aims to distract and deflect from the role that Party played in our economic collapse, as it presided over a system of light-touch regulation and the relentless encouragement of a property bubble.

Mr Murphy said: "The cavalier attitude of some of the most senior bankers in Anglo Irish Bank, which have been revealed this week through the Irish Independent, have sickened the public to its core and accelerated the need in the minds of many for an inquiry into what exactly went on in the run-up to the issuing of the bank guarantee.

"The strategy which is being adopted by Fianna Fáil, however, in calling for an inquiry, presided over by a judicial chair from outside this jurisdiction, is a blatant attempt to delay proceedings and to deflect from that Party’s failures in ensuring that the regulators were regulating.

"The regulatory environment that operates within the State is a direct result of the culture and the political decisions taken by the Government of the day. If Fianna Fáil has no problem in facing up to the truth, as it repeatedly claims, why is it taking such issue with an inquiry being carried out by those who were directly elected by the people to run and manage the country?

"Fianna Fáil had an opportunity to carry out an investigation of its own choosing back in 2010. In that instance it opted to hold a Committee of Inquiry in secret, which produced the Nyberg Report in which not one person was named. Protestations now that the Oireachtas could not possibly hold an effective inquiry, when it has proven to be more than capable of doing so in the past, aims to act as a fig leaf for the Party that created the property bubble and built our economy on taxes derived from the construction sector.

"Let there be no mistake, an Oireachtas inquiry will not be a substitution for criminal prosecutions. There are currently 60 charges being brought in the case of three individuals by the Gardaí, the DPP and the ODCE who have been building books of evidence for some time now. The public needs answers to who met who and why decisions were taken in the manner in which they were as our banking system hung in the balance. Determining those answers by way of a costly and lengthy tribunal that makes lawyers rich and bleeds the taxpayer dry is not the answer."

(CD/JP)