Bankers reprise Dáil storming as €22bn love affair endorsed

BANKERS were allowed to run riot at Leinster House again yesterday as they stormed the Dáil chamber and once more held the nation to ransom.

Just hours after anti-capitalist protesters briefly burst a few yards through the wide open main gate of the parliamentary compound before being beaten back by gardaí, the plight of the greedy plutocrats who brought the country to the brink of economic ruin again dominated the horseshoe shaped debating chamber.

And the unedifying spectacle allowed Brian Cowen to continue to reveal the strangely obsequious nature of his one-sided relationship with the banks, which seems to consist of him putting billions of taxpayers euros into them, but never getting anything worthwhile back in return – like a credit flow, or basic respect.

In this weird inverted Alice in Wonderland world, Brian in blunderland insisted he could not “interfere” in the internal running of a bailed-out bank like Anglo Irish last month when the nation was outraged at the salary rises at the scandal- splattered institution, yet now we discover the Government had no problem rewriting the chairman’s letter to shareholders because it was “too negative”.

Labour’s Eamon Gilmore insisted the Finance Department had “doctored” the statement issued to shareholders with the bank’s annual report last year in order to put Anglo’s financial situation in a better light – and keep the public in the dark on the reality.

After denouncing the claim as a “conspiracy theory too far”, Mr Cowen then read from a carefully crafted briefing document slipped to him by the Chief Whip which was dappled in the deliciously opaque language of civil service slipperiness.

“The chairman’s statement was finalised to reflect the chairman’s considered views and published with the annual report,” the Taoiseach insisted.

But then Mr Cowen appeared to give the game away by indicating that keeping the whole financial mess allowed to fester in the bubble boom from going down the drain dwarfed everything else.

“The paramount concern of the Department of Finance at the time of this statement was to do everything possible to protect the stability of the entire banking system at a time of great fragility.

“In the context of spring 2009, it was important that any statement relating to the liquidity situation in any bank, particularly a nationalised bank where the taxpayer was directly exposed, should have taken into account the potential impact on the broader financial system and ultimately on the entire economy,” he told TDs.

So, it wasn’t “doctored” just “finalised” to reflect the chairman’s “considered” feelings at a time when the Government was panicking like mad. Hmmmmm.

Across the water, David Cameron and Nick Clegg all but held hands in the Downing Street rose garden as their bizarre political love-in got off to an early bloom – the Lib Dem leader deliriously oblivious to how much the hook-up will eventually cost him and his party.

Alas, we already know the cost to the taxpayer of Mr Cowen’s equally inexplicable enthralment to Anglo and its golden circle – some €22bn and rising.