No support for secret banking probe

THE Government will meet stiff resistance if it attempts to press ahead with a plan for a banking inquiry that will investigate in secret.

Opposition parties, which have called for the probe to happen, said they will not support it unless it is held in the open where taxpayers can scrutinise the issues.

Labour Party leader Eamon Gilmore said the country needed to know exactly what went wrong and those to blame needed to be fingered.

“We do need to know why this whole problem has arisen. That is why we need to have a proper public inquiry into the banking system not some kind of secret inquiry which would appear to be where the Government is at,” he said.

He told RTÉ’s This Week programme Fianna Fáil should not be allowed “brush under the carpet” the reasons the financial system collapsed.

Mr Gilmore agreed with the end-of-summer timeframe as a completion date for the inquiry but not with the need to shelter its investigations from public view.

He believed it should be completed by the end of September, when the initial two-year bank guarantee is due to expire, to inform the manner in which the state should prop up the banking sector into the future.

Fine Gael’s finance spokesman Richard Bruton also criticised the suggestion of a secret inquiry.

“The essence of effective regulation is proper accountability and that accountability will have consequences. Conducting a banking inquiry in camera would damage the effectiveness of such an inquiry,” he said.

On RTÉ’s The Week in Politics last night Government chief whip Pat Carey said the inquiry would not be delayed and ultimately be answerable to the Dáil.

“Hearings can be heard in private initially but it is important ultimately that the Dáil is involved in discussing how all of this happened.”

Initially it said no details of its intentions would be released in advance of Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting.

However, the Green Party’s finance spokesman Dan Boyle already signalled that the inquiry would rely on fieldwork by outside experts rather than public questioning in a Dáil Committee.

He said these reports, on various aspects of the debacle, would the eventually report to a committee.

An alternative option, circulated to Sunday newspapers, has the same thrust but differs in key areas. This would involve an international investigator compiling an initial report which would be used to set down the terms of reference for a more comprehensive probe.

This would have the power to compel witnesses to give evidence and order paperwork to be handed over.

And, because it would be held in private, it would not have the same risk of undermining criminal trials.

This is likely to lead to concerns about how long the inquiry would take and how much information would ever be made public.

This week the Labour Party will table a motion calling for support for its private members’ legislation, to restore powers of inquiry to Oireachtas committees.

The Government said it is considering the proposals.