Bank guarantee report - Openness in short supply

While in opposition, Michael Noonan called for openness in dealing with the banking collapse, but now as Minister for Finance, he has been sitting on the report conducted by accountants Ernst and Young and solicitors McCann Fitzgerald in the events that led the Government to pump €5.4 billion of taxpayers’ money in Irish Nationwide.

The minister and the Department of Finance have had the report since the middle of last year.

While in opposition, Fine Gael and the Labour Party were in the happy position of being able to criticise the previous government freely, because they were not responsible for what happened.

They called for openness, but now that they are in power they appear to be adopting the same kind of secretive approach.

Some may say that this is politics, but it is certainly does not inspire confidence. The Green Party was wiped out and Fianna Fáil suffered the greatest humiliation in the history of the party.

Michael McGrath, the Fianna Fáil spokesman on finance, has called for as much of the report as possible to be released to the public.

“It should also be passed to the gardaí and other state agencies, like corporate enforcement, to see if they need to take any actions on foot of its findings,” Mr McGrath stated.

This is not good enough. If the report does not expose legally questionable practices, it should already have been published, and if there are issues of a legal or criminal nature, it should already have been passed to the gardaí and other enforcement agencies.

The Government must come clean on this issue without further delay.