Cowen tries to deflect criticism of inquiry

A RILED-UP Taoiseach Brian Cowen has tried to deflect severe criticism at his Government’s decision to curtail the scope of the banking inquiry.

During Leaders’ Questions in the Dáil, Mr Cowen said the inquiry was being set up to look into the causes of the crisis and not Government decisions taken to resolve it. This meant it would not question the wisdom of policy choices and would focus on the period prior to September 2008.

Mr Cowen said he was accountable on a daily basis to the Dáil for all the decisions he made and he would co-operate with any request from the Commission to supplement that.

Labour Party leader Eamon Gilmore drew an angry response from Mr Cowen when he suggested other alternatives to solving the banking collapse should be considered. He said the public deserved answers as to why Anglo Irish Bank was not nationalised on the night of the guarantee scheme. And the investigation should provide an answer for why a “piggy bank for rogue developers” was considered to be of a similar systemic importance to AIB and Bank of Ireland.

Mr Cowen said the decisions could not be revisited and claimed, had the Labour Party got its way at the time of the guarantee, there would a “meltdown of the financial system”. He said the three-stage investigation would be independent and deliver answers.

Mr Cowen drew comparisons with the Judge Yvonne Murphy’s Commission which looked at how the Catholic Church handled allegations of child abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese. All political parties had praised its work and the information it uncovered.

Unlike the scrutiny the leaders of the Catholic Church were put under by Judge Murphy the Cabinet will not have to account for its decisions.

Mr Gilmore referenced the ongoing inquiry in Britain into the decision to go to war in Iraq. He said, by Mr Cowen’s logic, former prime minister Tony Blair would not have been called to give evidence because it would only investigate whether or not there were weapons of mass destruction. “What the Government is doing here is it is setting up an inquiry about everything about banking except the Government’s own policies.”

Mr Cowen said the Iraq commission was not an accurate comparison, because Britain was on its fourth inquiry into the Iraq war.

Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny said the main political figures in the crisis should set an example and waive their right to anonymity under the Commission of Investigation legislation. He said anybody questioned by a statutory commission had the right to deliver their evidence in public.

Mr Kenny said Mr Cowen and Mr Lenihan should commit to being questioned in the open, under section 11 of the 2004 Act.

“It would go some small way to se that some people answer for policy decisions.”