FG will force TDs to publicly back Cowen
The party has tabled a private members’ motion calling on the Government to reveal the 10 people who borrowed €451 million to buy shares in the bank last July.
Before a vote is taken tomorrow the party will seek:
A full account of the Government’s plans to reclaim the €300m outstanding from the deal.
A complete dismissal of the board of the Financial Regulatory Authority.
The publication of summary reports completed by PricewaterhouseCoopers into the loan exposures facing the other banks guaranteed by Government.
Fine Gael’s Richard Bruton said the Department of Finance had to account for everything that was known about the Anglo deals.
Yesterday Green party leader and Environment Minister John Gormley said if he was still in opposition he would have found it hard to resist pursuing the same strategy.
And he told Newstalk’s lunchtime show he would be in favour of a grand coalition of all parties in the Dáil if it helped solve the economic crisis.
“As far as the Green Party is concerned... we have always said that we are open to the concept of national government.
“I don’t think it would be responsible for any party to say that this isn’t on the agenda. But realistically I know that Fianna Fáil are not particularly interested, nor are Fine Gael and Labour,” he said.
He also suggested there was room for manoeuvre on the format of the pension levy which provoked a 100,000-person protest in Dublin on Saturday.
This week the Dáil will sit late to enable the Government to push through its cost-cutting measures.
But yesterday the Department of Finance said that bar some changes on the technical language, the thrust of the package will remain the same.
Finance Minister Brian Lenihan had indicated he would be willing to adjust the pension levy if there was a way to save the money by other means.
However, the department said no such proposal has been received and the structure of the levy is still the same.
Separately, the Financial Regulator’s office refused to outline how it was dealing with a report which said former regulator Patrick Neary was aware of Anglo’s “balance management” efforts last summer.
The Sunday Tribune published an internal Anglo report that claimed Mr Neary told the bank’s finance director “fair play”, when he was informed it had temporarily resolved its cash crisis in September.
The spokesman said, with regard to all deals used to shore up the price of Anglo during 2008, it had no prior knowledge of how they were structured.
The spokesman would not say if it had its own records which confirmed or disputed the account of events detailed in the Anglo report.
Yesterday the Oireachtas committee on economic regulation invited Mr Neary to appear before it.
Committee chairman Michael Moynihan said he wanted a full explanation of everything that was known about the “balance management” exercise.
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