More heads will roll in fallout, says Lenihan

MORE senior bankers will step down or resign their positions in the coming weeks, Finance Minister, Brian Lenihan, said last night adding that the Government was “shocked” by recent revelations of financial dealings.

Mr Lenihan also told the Dáil that the nationalisation of Allied Irish Bank and Bank of Ireland will be avoided “if at all possible”.

Following the re-capitalisation of both banks earlier this month, he said other financial institutions “will be looked at in due course”.

Mr Lenihan said continued revelations about wrong doings in the banking sector “damage all of us individually and collectively”.

He said: “There is absolutely no doubt that there needs to be accountability in the financial sector for what has happened. We have already seen a number of senior people stand down for various reasons and I am quite clear that more will follow when that is appropriate.”

Mr Lenihan said he will “ensure that there is an independent banking sector” and that he would like to see a “third significant player” in the market.

He was speaking just two days after union leader, David Begg of ICTU, said he was certain all Irish banks will be taken into state ownership in the next three months.

The Minister addressed the Dáil during a private members’ motion by Fine Gael calling for a number of changes in how the financial system operates, including the sacking of the entire board and management of the office of the financial regulator and the naming of the so-called Golden Circle of ten individuals involved in transactions at Anglo Irish Bank.

Fine Gael spokesman on Finance, Richard Bruton called for a tidying up and “an entirely fresh start” in Irish banking.

“Unless the Government can be open to new ideas we will go down the tubes and that is the state of affairs. This Government has shown it can’t fix the crisis we face its not capable of addressing the scale of the crisis,” he said.

Mr Bruton called for a “a clean break” in the system

“If we persist with the same regulatory system that has failed in such an appalling way, that is still struggling to come to terms with conflicting evidence about what it knew and what it failed to do, we will make our financial crisis greater,” he said.