Let’s lift the state’s gagging rule on bank scandal

WE got the standard Fianna Fáil tactics of bluster, spin and shooting the messenger in response to Brian Cowen’s abysmal Morning Ireland interview last week.

His colleagues tried to tell each and every one of us we shouldn’t actually believe evidence we’d heard with our own ears.

So it’s clear these tactics will also be employed in the promised banking inquiry.

With the economic collapse being the greatest ever threat to Ireland’s sovereignty and the urgent need to know exactly what took place without the usual expense, lack of co-operation and time-wasting, I propose that the opposition promise as part of their election campaign that they will suspend the 30-year rule in relation to all aspects of the banking scandal. How does it benefit the public to have to wait 30 years to hear the truth about how their country has been brought to the brink of collapse? And in the meantime be expected to pick up the tab for inquiries we already know will be nothing more than expensive whitewashes.

The 30-year rule exists only to protect our sovereignty, but if it is already threatened, suspending that rule could help us find out why. In this instance, such a move would actually give the state more protection than the rule was originally designed to achieve.

Brian Hopkins

Mount Drummond Square

Harolds Cross

Dublin 6