Banking inquiry agrees to cut key sections to focus on 2008 guarantee and 2010 bailout

The bank inquiry has agreed to drastically cut the size of its crisis-hit report by ignoring any issues which do not relate to the 2008 guarantee or 2010 bailout in a bid to save the year-long investigation.

The 11 TDs and senators who form the inquiry decided on the last-minute move as it emerged the scale of inaccuracies in the draft report central to the now pressing timeline problems had been known by back-room officials for more than a month but were not revealed to the committee.

After scrapping the 750-page draft report entirely due to claims that more than 1,000 changes needed to be made by the end of last week, the inquiry yesterday agreed that its formal report must now be shortened to just 250-400 pages and only focus on “new” issues, the 2008 guarantee and 2010 bailout.

Evidence previously considered vital surrounding the role of the media and relationship between developers and bankers has been jettisoned, with inquiry members privately stating the document is unlikely to meet original aspirations but is needed as a vehicle to publish 500,000 documents and a series of recommendations.

The new report must be drawn up by Monday, before being given to all inquiry members for examination next Wednesday, finalised next Thursday and then sent out for legal rights of reply that weekend.

This means the original time-frame to ensure the report is published before the election — a legal requirement as the inquiry ceases to exist after the vote — has now changed, with the original plan to send out the report for legal responses next Tuesday pushed back five days.

Officially, the inquiry is continuing to aim for its previously stated January 20 publication date.

However, last night Labour TD and inquiry chair Ciaran Lynch was reluctant to commit to the exact date, claiming it had never been formally stated.

Meanwhile, the Irish Examiner understands key concerns about the scale of the problems surrounding the now-scrapped draft report were known for at least five weeks by the back-room team responsible for its content despite not being revealed to the committee.

Inquiry members from different parties confirmed they were told of the issue by a senior legal official at last Saturday’s crisis meeting.

The TD and senator members said they were not aware of any issues until they saw the draft last week, and that this delay in providing information has significantly hampered the investigation’s ability to complete its work.

Mr Lynch said “I would have been aware of challenges” between back-room team members for a number of weeks.

However, he stressed that he was simply kept up to date on the progress of the draft version as part of a steering committee linking the two groups, and was not aware of the exact nature of the difficulties until seeing the draft last week.