Bank probe unlikely to tell us the full story
UNDER the 30-year rule, previously confidential state papers are made publicly available three decades after they have been created. At the end of last month, for example, the state papers from 1979 became available, and an array of fascinating – and previously unknown – information came to light.
They revealed, for example, how it took almost nine hours for civil servants to track down the then Taoiseach Jack Lynch on his holidays in Portugal to tell him about the IRA assassination of Lord Mountbatten. The papers also showed that the Government secretly forged trade links with Libya in the 1970s despite privately acknowledging the north African state was arming the IRA.
What relevance does the 30-year rule have to the banking inquiry? Well, because of the inquiry format being proposed by the Government, it looks like we will have to wait 30 years to learn the content of crucial internal documentation about key Government decisions such as the bank guarantee scheme and the nationalisation of Anglo.
Under the format announced by the Government, the inquiry will examine only those events which happened up to September 2008, the month when the crisis erupted. Therefore, Government policy up to September 2008 will be a valid topic for inquiry. But Government policy after September 2008 will be firmly off limits.
And as the opposition parties have rightly pointed out, a host of crucial decisions were taken by the Government after September 2008 to rescue the banks. More pertinently, these decisions resulted in billions of euro of taxpayers’ money being pumped into the banks. But the Government does not propose that its decisions on these matters will be examined.
The Government is offering two reasons why these matters are being placed off limits. Firstly, it says, the inquiry is being established to examine the causes of the banking crisis, not the Government response to it. Therefore, according to this logic, decisions such as the nationalisation of Anglo do not need to be examined because they formed part of the response, rather than being a cause.
Secondly, the Government says that all the key policies it implemented after September 2008 to rescue the banks were comprehensively debated in the Dáil. The suggestion, therefore, is that the Government has already revealed every pertinent detail about these decisions. We are supposed to accept the idea that there is nothing in the internal paperwork in, say, the Department of Finance that would throw further light on the issues at hand.
But that is very difficult to accept. The state papers released annually under the 30-year rule show just how much was not revealed to the public by successive governments about crucial issues of the day.
But despite the fact that the Government is assuring us this inquiry is the best way at getting the truth, they are persisting with the September 2008 cut-off point and insisting it won’t be “opening the books” [to use Finance Minister Brian Lenihan’s phrase] on the policies it implemented after that date.
Speaking on RTÉ Radio yesterday, Independent senator Shane Ross – one of the most respected voices on financial and business matters – voiced his disbelief at the September 2008 cut-off point.
“Why in the name of God is this going to end on September 30, 2008, which is when the whole thing began? Is it because we don’t want politicians to be brought into the wringer to answer questions about the decisions which they made?” he queried.
“September 30, 2008 was the night of the [bank] guarantee… Why in the name of God are we not going to cover the period after that – what happened when and what part all these people played then? These are the vital questions… Covering up those is extraordinary.”
The Government, of course, denies anything is being covered up. But by sticking to the September cut-off point, the coalition is practically ensuring that suspicions of its motives will linger for years.
