Taoiseach, please don’t take us all for fools

Reading Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s words over the last few days regarding his intervention on the composition of the banking inquiry makes one wonder how gullible he thinks we are.

His earlier pre-general election comment that ‘Paddy wants to know’ was so much flannel.

The bottom line is that his and his party’s actions since his election confirm that the very last thing he wants is for ‘Paddy to know.’ Better to keep Paddy under the stairs in the dark and treat him like one would mushrooms, that is, feed him platitudinous manure?

We have waited almost six years for an inquiry into what happened to our economy. We need to understand the sequence of events leading up to the realisation that we were left in the mire.

What was the basis for the decisions that were made on that fateful night at the end of September 2008? We want to know how, why, and who made the particular decision to saddle the people of Ireland with a long-term financial anchor around its proverbial neck. We need to know who specifically gave the instruction not to burn the bond holders and why it was agreed.

However, it cannot end there. That is where Mr Kenny would like this inquiry to stop. Fianna Fáil would be in the frame and that would really do nicely coming up to the next election.

We also want to know why this Government committed to ameliorating the impact of the troika’s policies on the people of Ireland but reneged on that commitment. Indeed, it could be argued given the presence of Labour in the Coalition, that this Government has acted far more savagely than Fianna Fáil would have done.

We would also like to know if, in fact, the EU or the ECB did agree to refund Ireland the tens of billions that was needed to protect the European bondholders and when we will get it. Perhaps, it was a convenient figment of the Coalition’s communal imagination.

When Enda Kenny suggested that it would not be possible to agree the terms of reference for the inquiry, there is little scope for doubt of his real intentions. His implied argument that its composition should represent the balance of power in the Dáil holds little water. The people have spoken since that general election day in 2011 and his and Labour’s share of the vote is heading south in a hurry.

We know only too well the impact of narrowing terms of reference. If we do not, all we have to do is read up on the analysis of the Cooke report on GSOC.

The bottom line is that he and his Labour colleagues dropped a clanger, did not get their organisation right, and as the result of another “unintended consequence” missed the vote. The net result is that two non-coalition legislators get on the committee, thereby putting the coalition in a minority position.

His actions in trying to recover the situation could result in totally undermining the inquiry and with it our need and our right to know what happened and why.

Mr Kenny’s actions since the election for the inquiry members are such that he seems to care little for democracy and even less that the people of Ireland are entitled to know the answers to the myriad questions to be asked.

Limiting the scope of the inquiry to focus only on what Fianna Fáil did or didn’t do would do us all a disservice. If we do not want to repeat the mistakes of the past we need to know what they were. Otherwise we will definitely repeat them.

It would be a big mistake for Mr Kenny and his comrades to take us all for idiots.