PAC banks report - Let’s hope we’ve learnt the lessons

IT is difficult to understand how, in September 2008, less than three days after the country’s two top finance watchdogs – the Central Bank chief John Hurley and financial regulator Patrick Neary – told Government that Ireland’s banks were not facing a debt or cash-flow crisis that a €440 billion deposit guarantee was deemed unavoidable.

We were assured that if such a guarantee was not provided there would be a run on the banks and that complete economic collapse would ensue. It is hard to understand how these experienced and very influential public servants could not see the wood from the trees. And, if they could not see that we were on a Cresta Run spiral towards financial ruin how could politicians who had no training of any kind in high finance?

We are enduring the consequences of very many regrettable political decisions but if advice, advice that should be utterly reliable, was so far off the mark then chaos is almost inevitable.