Recent weeks marked a significant turning point in the long-running mortgage arrears saga where the policy of kicking the can down the road has started running out of road.

If past is prologue, then this week’s 10th anniversary of anxious queues forming outside Northern Rock should serve as a reminder that in banking everything is fine until it isn’t fine.

Back in the cold war era, regular reports from Pravda used to extoll the virtues of Soviet collective agriculture, reciting records of constantly improving wheat production.

Advocates for debt-saddled homeowners said they are shocked by official figures showing a rise in new early-stage mortgage arrears.

Official figures have shown a second successive quarterly increase in homeowners falling into early-stage arrears, with one in 10 households now behind in their mortgage payments.

BBC’s Panorama recently revealed new evidence about the banking crisis. It suggested that the UK regulator was complicit in manipulating Libor, the main UK benchmark interest rate from which millions of financial products are priced.

‘Government isn’t working’ has been a recurring theme of the past decade. In many ways, it has been the underlying message behind the rising wave of populism.

A proposal under discussion by Klaus Regling and other senior European officials to create a Nama-like ‘bad bank’ to buy out bad loans weighing down Europe’s banks could boost the Government’s hopes of selling shares in AIB this year, according to an Irish expert.

‘New normal’ economics new but never normal, writes Eugene McErlean.

First-time buyers are to get up to €10,000 in a tax rebate as part of Government plans to reheat the property market.

Fine Gael MEP Brian Hayes said he has raised directly with the ECB the “really serious” claims made by an AIB whistleblower who alleges the bank misled regulators in its dealings with loans in arrears.

Allegations of an AIB whistleblower who says the bank misled regulators in dealing with corporate loans in arrears raises far wider concerns beyond the specifics of the case, the country’s leading expert on banking and corporate governance said.

It is hard to believe that there are now more people in long-term mortgage arrears than was the case in 2011 at the beginning of the last Dáil.

It used to be the case that reports on the health of European banks merited front-page headlines. Former regulators such as Matthew Elderfield and Patrick Honohan were household names.

Eugene McErlean is an expert on banking and corporate governance and he wonders why the improvements seen in aircraft safety which have resulted from disasters over the last 50 years seem like a distant aspiration when it comes to banking. 

Most US economic commentators will tell you one of the main reasons the US is recovering better than Europe is because the US cleaned up the balance sheets of the US banks.

The world’s largest accounting firms were yesterday cleared of blame for their audits of banks here as the country hurtled toward financial disaster in 2008.

I was talking to the assistant manager from my local bank the other day. Very bright lad, sharp as a tack, the sort who could accurately count your lodgement just by having a quick glance at the size of it out of the corner of his eye.

Senior debt advisers say the last of the senior bank chiefs to appear in front of the Finance Committee puts the contentious issue of home owners paying high standard variable rates firmly back in the Government’s court.

The Government is flouting its rules on appointments to state boards, with more than two-thirds of positions filled without being advertised.

The Government is continuing to break its own rules on appointments to state boards, with the majority of positions filled by people selected by ministers without going through a public advertisement process.

There is a powerful whiff of hypocrisy behind today’s shocking report showing the Government is shamelessly ignoring its own rules on appointments to state boards.

Ibec has criticised the Government for not carrying out a regulatory impact assessment on the proposed “whistleblower” legislation, ahead of the initial draft of laws being drawn up.

Same colours — different teams. That sums up the similarity between a discredited Fianna Fáil administration and the current Fine Gael-led coalition when it comes to doling out positions on state boards.

The majority of appointments to state boards in the past year were made by ministers without being advertised, despite Government promises to the contrary.

THE Financial Regulator has told a Dáil committee that there is scope for the Government to buy debt back from bondholders in the banks, at a discount, but warned that any approach should be made with extreme caution.

QUESTIONS remain about how Irish banks lost so much money, according to the Governor of the Central Bank who has said he believes there will be an inquiry into the causes of the recent crisis in the Irish banking system.

IT seems highly unlikely that officials from either AIB or Goodbody Stockbrokers will face any sanctions over the use of offshore funds to trade shares in the bank in the early part of this decade, as both the Financial Regulator and the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE) lack the power to impose any punishment.

AIB’s outgoing chief executive Eugene Sheehy has denied accusations that the bank had acted illegally in allowing its subsidiary, Goodbody Stockbrokers, to trade in its shares overseas before legislation was changed to formally allow it to do so.

JUST when you thought our sleaze-splattered banking sector could hardly get much murkier, up pops a money mystery worthy of Hercule Poirot.

FORMER internal auditor at AIB Eugene McErlean has accepted an apology from the bank’s top brass, adding that he has moved on from feeling any animosity towards the bank.

AIB’s stockbrokers breached money laundering rules but did not break the law by share deals using firms based in offshore tax havens, it was claimed today.

The chief executive of AIB has admitted the bank was wrong when its stock broking arm Goodbody’s operated a scheme to get around a ban on trading in the bank's shares in 2001.

GOODBODY Stockbroker routed its clients’ money through a Caribbean tax haven in an effort to save millions of euro in stamp duty, according to the Financial Regulator.

The Chairman and CEO of the Financial Regulatory Authority will have a chance later today to respond to allegations that the Regulator knew about overcharging at AIB in 2001.

THE Financial Regulator is being called in to a Dáil committee tomorrow to explain how it dealt with irregular share dealing involving AIB and Goodbody Stockbrokers.

MONEY-LAUNDERING allegations involving multi-million sums of AIB shares were not communicated to the Department of Finance, who remained unaware that a Garda investigation was taking place into the dealings.

WHAT does the Financial Regulator have in common with one of the world’s most famous dress designers, a bishop of France’s Grand Siècle and Scary Spice?

THE Central Bank reported AIB and Goodbody Stockbrokers for suspected money laundering in 2001 and was not involved in any cover-up, the Financial Regulator has said.

EUGENE McERLEAN, a solicitor by profession, joined AIB in 1991 and became group internal auditor in 1997.

AIB issued a curt one-line statement last night in response to the spate of damaging allegations made by Eugene McErlean.

IS it too much to hope that we’ve had a Ben Dunne moment? Is it too much to hope that former internal auditor in AIB Eugene McErlean’s allegations to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Economic and Regulatory Affairs yesterday will have the same effect as the unintended consequences Ben Dunne’s throwaway remarks about political funding had all those years ago?

A GERMAN beer company’s name was used as a front for the extraordinary handling of millions of euro belonging to AIB shareholders which was routed through tax havens in South Pacific and Caribbean islands, it was claimed yesterday.

The Financial Regulator today rejected claims by a former internal auditor with AIB that the Regulator know about over-charging in the bank as far back as 2001.

A former internal auditor with AIB is claiming that the financial regulator knew about over-charging in the bank, but failed to take adequate action to protect consumers.