Noonan blames Cowen for ignoring bubble warnings

Finance Minister Michael Noonan has suggested that Brian Cowen was ultimately responsible for a civil servant’s warnings on the property bubble being ignored.

Assistant principal officer Marie Mackle warned repeatedly between 2005 and 2007 of the possibility of a housing crash that would expose the banks.

She tried but failed to have such warnings reflected in official speeches and parliamentary answers given by Mr Cowen, who was finance minister at the time.

The Sunday Independent reported over the weekend that her superiors at the department dismissed her warnings, considering them unsuitable for speeches and answers given by Mr Cowen.

However, Mr Noonan suggested yesterday that it was Mr Cowen, rather than any of the senior civil servants involved, who bore the ultimate responsibility for this.

“It’s the minister’s reply, it’s not the department’s reply, and it goes out as the considered view of the minister. And as a consequence then, the minister has to take ministerial and personal responsibility for the content of it.”

Mr Noonan said the Nyberg report into the banking collapse had identified the failure to consider minority views as one of the factors behind the crisis.

“Minister Cowen answered the questions in question — he was minister for finance during that period. But if you look at Nyberg, it’s studded with references to one of the problems in the system being the lack of acknowledgement of minority, contrarian views…

“That’s what happened at the time. I’m not criticising anybody, and I think the lady in question is very courageous in her views, and I think everybody has read the article.

“But that doesn’t mean that anybody else within the civil service in the department was culpable. It was the minister’s responsibility to answer the question and take responsibility for the answer that was given out.

“I mean, things have to change.”