Banking inquiry - Committee cannot be held back

Members of the Dáil Public Accounts Committee (PAC) have been told that no findings of facts can be made against previous office holders in the forthcoming inquiries into the banking fiasco.

The aim of the hearings is to help legislators prepare legislation for the future by learning from the mistakes of the past.

This is essentially a curtailment of parliamentary privilege, because members of the Oireachtas are being limited in their freedom to express opinions. Legislators have been free to speak out without running the risk of libel litigation, and the media is free to report what was said. This privilege has been abused at different times over the decades, but it was up to the Oireachtas to discipline its members. Now it seems the Government is trying to curb parliamentary privilege, and people should be asking why.

Officials responsible for drafting the legislation note that the 2002 Abbeylara court judgment ruled that Oireachtas inquiries do not have the power to make findings or express opinions against the good name of citizens. In other words, politicians do not have the right to assume the functions of a court of law in determining the guilt of individual citizens. This seems reasonable.

The PAC may not be able to make any findings of fact, but it is more important that it should release all the relevant material. People can then make up their own minds, which is at the core of a democracy. Any attempt to block people from coming to their own conclusions would be a fundamental infringement of freedom. This should not be tolerated for one minute.

About 50,000 people marched in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Galway, and Sligo to protest against the bank debt burden being imposed on the Irish people. Most people probably welcomed last week’s deal in the prevailing circumstances, but everybody should realise that the children of this country and their future in turn are being saddled with paying an enormous debt over the decades to come.

Meanwhile, it seems that those most responsible have actually been rewarded for their greed or indifference. Maybe those who acted with malice were comparatively few, but they were apparently facilitated by the blind indifference of many others; especially those regulators who failed to do their jobs. These people have been let go with generous severance packages and handsome pensions while everybody else, including the poorest and most deprived in society, will be expected to pay, as there will be so much less to go around.

The two big stories last week were the banking deal and the report on the Magdalene Laundries. Those laundries are now closed and the exploitation of their unfortunate inmates has been ended, but nobody has really been held responsible for their dreadful exploitation. In most instances it is too late to hold anybody responsible for the Magdalene abuses, but it is not too late to hold a proper inquiry into the financial abuses to ensure that the culpable are held responsible.