Banking scandal - Inquiry must be open and unfettered

IT IS the hope that dare not speak its name; it may yet only be whispered even in the secure confines of 65-66 Lower Mount Street, but there is a nascent hope amongst Fianna Fáil’s true believers that they may have weathered the very worst of the storm.

The most faithful, the unshakeable hard core, believe that time may yet become their elixir and that if they can defer an election until the very last possible moment — June, 2012 — they might not face the devastation predicted should they have to go to the polls anytime soon.

Maybe this optimism, this unexpected mirage on the horizon, is the catalyst for the notion that sections of the banking inquiry, which expected to be formally announced after today’s Cabinet meeting, might yet be conducted in camera.

The bizarre hope seems to be that some modules might be conducted in a kind of comforting Star Chamber where, well we can’t say what might go on because it would be held in secret but we could offer an educated guess.

It does not leave anyone open to accusations of cynicism to suggest that those who played starring roles in the Ahern catastrophe — then Finance Minister Brian Cowen and several of his cabinet colleagues for instance — might have most to benefit from this secretive, anti-democratic arrangement.

If there is an element of secrecy in the inquiry expected today it will be hard to argue that it is not irrevocably holed below the waterline long before it begins its work.

It would fatally wound the premiership and political career of Brian Cowen as he would be seen as part of a culture unprepared to accept scrutiny. It would again suggest, as the death by a thousand cuts inflicted on the Freedom of Information Act has done already, that Fianna Fáil’s natural environment is one where transparency is for whiskey tumblers.

The Greens have insisted that they support a fully public inquiry though party chairman and finance spokesman Senator Dan Boyle, speaking on RTÉ yesterday morning, refused to say whether Brian Cowen should be questioned by the inquiry team or not. It is difficult to see what lies behind Mr Boyle’s reticence as any inquiry without a thorough testimony from Mr Cowen and his predecessor would be meaningless.

Just as anything less than a fully open inquiry would fatally wound Mr Cowen politically rubber-stamping such an arrangement would make the Greens irrelevant as they would confirm themselves as nothing more than the how-high-sir, rent-a-vote reliables of the current temporary little arrangement.

Though it is vital that the entire inquiry be open — there is a very good case for broadcasting the entire proceedings live — there are many other aspects of the terms of reference that are hugely important as well. This inquiry, as we said before, is about much more than banking.

It will be about how this democracy really works and for who. There are few projects more important to the future of this society.