Cregan asks for help from fellow judiciary members to speed up IBRC Commission of Investigation

The judge running the Commission of Investigation into IBRC has officially asked for more judges to be appointed to help speed up his work.

Judge Brian Cregan has said there are so many transactions to investigate it is impossible to say how long his job will take.

The 69 page interim report published this evening says that investigating all 38 transactions under current laws would take several years and result in substantial costs - which the chairman says would not be in the public interest.

Mr Justice Cregan wants changes in the law to get over the issues of confidentiality and legal privilege.

However, he has identified new problems surrounding secrecy of Central Bank documents that are based in European law, and problems accessing documents from the stock exchange to assess if there was any insider trading, while Siteserv was liquidated and would need to be reconstituted.

Mr Justice Cregan's also identified a perceived or actual conflict of interest in a number of transactions, but he added that could be overcome with the appointment of another judge to the commission.

Among his recommendations are the appointment of at least one more judge and to focus on the top 12 transactions that account for more than two-thirds of the €1.9bn in writeoffs, he says once the legal issues are sorted out a report on these could be delivered in 18 months to two years.