Paul Mills: We need transparency on the banking crisis

There’s an old saying that ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’.

In Ireland it would appear that while we pay the piper through our taxes we have no guarantee that he or she does the work, or that he does the work properly or indeed that he is even capable of doing the work.

When it all goes wrong and if we, somehow, get up the courage to ask what happened or why, hyperbole and hubris is the order of the day.

Truth and facts are not on the menu.

In fact, it’s even worse than that, it would appear that we are not entitled to know what happened, who made the mistake, was incompetent, corrupt or just plain lazy.

New draft report agreed for Banking Inquiry https://t.co/xJvaeHHlkM pic.twitter.com/qSYsms9unC

— Irish Examiner (@irishexaminer) November 24, 2015

We are not even apparently entitled to know what happened so that we can protect ourselves in the future.

It would appear that the confidentiality of certain well-heeled individuals is more important than the common good or indeed the waste of hard-earned taxpayers’ funds.

One thing is for sure: In Ireland and in parts of the European project, we do not do transparency or accountability.

We seem to allow those in government to erect bastions to insulate themselves from answering us.

It is our own fault because we let them do it.

Banking inquiry agrees to cut key sections to focus on 2008 guarantee and 2010 bailout https://t.co/LO5WxxDyTe pic.twitter.com/FUOXqaWPub

— Irish Examiner (@irishexaminer) November 25, 2015

Worse, we let them do it again and again.

That old proverb ‘fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me’ does not seem to have jogged our consciousness never mind prompted us to action.

Banks are a major plank in our economy. It’s important that a high level of trust exists between banker and client.

In the past, bankers, particularly in smaller communities, were very important and influential members of that community.

Bankers were, by and large trusted.

Today there is little if any trust in banks or in bankers. The law of the jungle prevails.

If you do not understand the small print you are gouged.

The net result of this is the drive to obtain banking bonuses by taking bigger and bigger risks.

McGrath: Banking Inquiry will meet over Christmas if necessary https://t.co/Igq7VhE8Kp pic.twitter.com/3QSgdAJcHo

— Irish Examiner (@irishexaminer) November 23, 2015

There is the culture of the ‘Gordon Gekko’, whose philosophy above all else was that greed is good, always.

Risk-taking coupled with ineffective regulators and sycophantic politicians resulted in Ireland’s recent economic collapse being far worse than it needed to be.

While that commentary is a broad read on how our economy collapsed it is only a man-on-the-street view albeit a view held by many.

To ensure that we could learn the lessons necessary to allow us to protect ourselves from such a collapse happening again, the Government after much urging set up a Dáil committee to explore and determine the facts of the banking crisis.

However, the Banking Inquiry committee was stymied from the outset by the legal strictures on which it is based.

In fact, it was told from the very start that this would be the case, but Dear Enda and Dear Michael knew better.

So after spending €5 million to date on finding out the facts, we are now told that there may not actually be any report.

It is seven years since the economy tanked and we are now no nearer to knowing the detail of what happened in the lead up to the bust.

A result of our economic downfall was the total collapse of a number of banks which resulted in the State having to bail them out to the tune of tens of billions.

In trying to recover some funds from the assets held by these banks the loans were sold.

Separately, questions were asked in the Dáil probing the prices paid by the purchasers, the original price paid by the bank for the assets and the additional discounts which appear to have been given to some if not all of the purchasers.

After a lot of pulling and tugging, these Dáil questions resulted in a commission of inquiry.

Now the commission has hit a brick wall. It does not have the power to access information and report on that information.

It needs more power.

It is is becoming ever clearer that we are being treated like mushrooms: Kept in the dark and every so often fed manure.

• Paul Mills writes on economics and politics.