Banks ‘were let off scot free’
The two banks involved were the country’s largest, AIB Group and the NAB subsidiary, National Irish Bank (NIB).
Both Richard Bruton of Fine Gael and Joan Burton of the Labour Party made the criticisms yesterday during a meeting of the Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service.
Their comments followed an address to the committee by Dr Liam O’Reilly, chief executive of the Irish Financial Services Regulatory Authority (IFSRA), which is charged with investigating the scandals.
Mr Bruton said that while individuals who were caught evading tax and were penalised up to six times their initial investment, the banks paid out little or nothing.
Mr Bruton said “the consequences of getting caught were not very high.”
Joan Burton agreed saying the banks “look to have got off scot free.”
This is particularly true when it is taken into account that the parent bank National Australia sold NIB recently for over €1 billion to Danish bank Danske.
“Where’s the proportionality in all of this?” said Ms Burton.
On AIB Dr O’Reilly said there was no evidence to suggest the Audit Committee was aware of the difficulties on over-charging on foreign exchange.
In response to a question from Ms Burton, he agreed that the role of the group internal auditor could profitably be given legal status just like the external audit.
One key issue that emerged over the foreign exchange debacle was that many of those in AIB did not fully understand the obligations on them.
He believed that was the case across a lot of the financial institutions and said this was an issue IFSRA intended to address.
Independent Senator Joe O’Toole expressed concern that despite the best efforts of IFSRA the investigations failed to assuage fears of the general public that they were getting the protection they need from IFSRA.
Dr O’Reilly concluded by saying: “I believe quite strongly that competition is the major protection at the end of the day.”
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