Publish guarantee scheme files or be damned is advice to Cowen

WHEN Brian Cowen was accused this week of “economic treason” for including Anglo in the Government’s bank guarantee scheme, he angrily denied the charge and insisted he had only ever acted in the country’s best interests.

Labour leader Eamon Gilmore, who had made the charge, had a simple retort: “Publish the advice.”

Gilmore’s suspicion is that the Government included Anglo in the scheme merely to “save the skins of a number of individuals, some of whom were connected to Fianna Fáil and whose property interests and prosperity were bound up” with the bank’s fortunes.

His argument is that if the Government wants to prove otherwise, it should publish all the relevant documentation from the days of September 29/30 which paved the way for Anglo’s inclusion in the scheme.

It was in the late hours of September 29, following a round of crisis meetings, that the Government decided a guarantee scheme was necessary for the banks. The Taoiseach and Finance Minister Brian Lenihan were the principals at the meetings. The Cabinet was consulted in the early hours of September 30 and the scheme was subsequently announced.

Although he did meet with the heads of AIB and Bank of Ireland on September 29, Mr Cowen told the Dáil this week that he did not receive any representation from Anglo Irish Bank on the night.

He also stressed that the decisions on the guarantee scheme were taken on the basis of advice “from public officials”, rather than bankers.

Finally, he said the decisions were made on the basis of discussions that night and into the early hours of September 30. “It was not a question of me getting papers. It was a case of examining the situation and asking what was the challenge to the system on that occasion, what needed to be done and whether the Government was prepared to act,” he told the Dáil.

But even if Mr Cowen did not receive formal “papers” as such, there was documentation generated over the period of September 29/30. And two records, in particular, would surely shed extra light on the circumstances by which the Government arrived at the decision to implement the guarantee scheme.

Record one details a meeting between the Taoiseach, Finance Minister and senior staff of their departments, the Attorney General, the chairman and chief executive of the Financial Services Regulatory Authority and the director general of the Central Bank.

Record two details a meeting much of the same cast as well as the governor of the Central Bank, the governor and chief executive of Bank of Ireland, and the chairman and chief executive of AIB.

The Sunday Times newspaper tried and failed to get these two records under the Freedom of Information Act.

The Information Commissioner ruled that the records should remain secret as they had been used for the “incorporeal” Cabinet meeting in the early hours of September 30, whereby other ministers were consulted over the phone rather than in person. And so secret they will remain.