Bailout has cost €40bn so far

The nation's crippling bank bailout has cost taxpayers an estimated €40 billion to date, the Governor of the Central Bank revealed.

In his first day of evidence to the State’s parliamentary banking inquiry, Patrick Honohan said the actual cost – after banks pay fees and with the State selling shares in rescued institutions – will drop from the original €64bn pumped in.

The Governor told the hearing that more consideration should have been given to liquidate rogue lenders Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide in September 2008 rather than including them in the mammoth €440bn guarantee of the banking system.

“The best estimate is around €40 billion” Mr Honohan said.

“In terms of net long term costs taking into account the recoverable amounts, the amounts paid in guarantee fees and taking account of when the Government sells shares in the banks.

“There are so many ifs and buts you could spend all morning on it.”

Mr Honohan compiled a report in 2010 for the Government attempting to explain why regulators did not spot the looming banking crisis in Dublin and attempt to prevent it and what the best containment measures would have been.

The Governor told the inquiry that he stands by his 130-page report and that the regulation system at the time of the crash in 2008 was one of “a triumph of hope over reality”.

In his opening address he said: “No regulatory system can or even should attempt to eliminate all possibility of failure, and regulation and supervision must be able to change with a constantly changing financial industry.

“But I think the more assertive and risk-based system of prudential supervision that we now have in place has struck the right balance and will help ensure that the banking system helps the economic performance of Ireland, rather than causing the economic destruction which we have all been seeking to repair and rebuild.”

The bank guarantee from September 2008 covered customers’ deposits and bank borrowings in all the major institutions.

The Banking Inquiry is holding a series of hearings in an attempt to uncover the reasons the mammoth blanket security was given and the failings in the regulatory and political systems at the time.

The European Central Bank has so far refused to take part in the inquiry.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny revealed late last year that he had pressed banking chief Mario Draghi to attend and answer questions over its role in Ireland’s bank bailout.

The ECB president had said that he would not answer to national parliaments despite questions remaining over the tone and content of a letter to the Government threatening to withdraw emergency funding from the Irish banking system in late 2010.

Mr Honohan revealed the possible extent of a bank rescue involving the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 2010 in a phone call to RTÉ Radio three days before the Government made a formal application for funding.

Committee members have been warned not to raise the phone call at today’s hearing.