Gaybo wants banking ‘sacrificial lamb’

RETIRED broadcaster Gay Byrne said he and others who lost money when bank shares collapsed need a sacrificial lamb to appease their anger. Those to blame “should be imprisoned”.

“There has to be a sacrificial lamb just as there has been and will be more sacrificial lambs in the whole child sexual abuse, clerical abuse story,” he said.

Mr Byrne explained he had lost money because his pension fund was invested in “all the absolutely water-tight safe things like Bank of Ireland, AIB and Anglo Irish”.

He did not have a large stake in the bank and described himself as a lowly shareholder.

He told Newstalk that people, especially the older generations, were entitled to feel angry at the regulators who had the “snout in the trough” like the rest of them.

“The young people will see it through but certainly in my lifetime things will never, ever be the same again. They will never return to what you and I, and countless other people thought as normal,” he said.

Meanwhile economics professor Colm McCarthy has laid out why he believes the Government should institute an inquiry into the banking collapse. He said legislation proposed by Pat Rabbitte of the Labour Party should be passed to allow for an Oireachtas inquiry or a Commission of Investigation, styled on the child abuse probe.

In a blog post Mr McCarthy, who the Department of Finance commissioned to write the report of An Bord Snip Nua, said the need for an inquiry was underlined by the impact the banking crisis would have.

He said this was much bigger than the DIRT inquiry and while difficult budget decisions would have been necessary if the banks had not collapsed, their problems undermined the cutback programme.

Mr McCarthy said the inquiry should focus on the mess Irish Nationwide Building Society got itself into with loans and the financial juggling which went on at Anglo Irish.

“The criminal investigations will take care of themselves,” he said.