Leveson-type inquiry needed

It is nothing short of a national disgrace that in 2013 we are still talking about holding an inquiry into the activities of the banking sector in the years leading up to the giving of the guarantee of the 28th day of September 2008, when the need to get to the bottom of the mess was obvious to all that very day.

The fact that our “political elite” are obfuscating at every turn about an inquiry and are only having their hands forced now by the revelations of recent days is so inexplicable that one wonders if they are really that stupid or is there some other agenda? Seeking to find out the truth can hardly be politically unpopular for even the most cowardly of public figures. As a citizen and taxpayer, I want to know what happened in all the bailed out banks, from the bottom to the top.

Considering it has taken five years for our “political elite” to even consider an inquiry, then no reasonable person can have any confidence in one held by the Oireachtas. Nor can anyone be enthusiastic at the idea of a repetition of the inquiries we have had in the past 20 years, which were ruinously costly in terms of time and money. What is required is a Leveson-type inquiry led by a High Court judge (or some other suitably-independent and respected person) with the central goal to get to the truth as soon as possible.

Finally, the suggestion that any inquiry must wait for the conclusion of the trials of certain persons is a fallacy. If it is feared that potential jurors will be influenced to such an extent there cannot be fair trials, then the answer is simple: refer such trials to the Special Criminal Court. Why should it be good enough for alleged paramilitaries and organised criminals, but not so for the sacred cows of Irish banking?

Of course, the chances of this coming to pass, of any wrongdoers being prosecuted expeditiously, of a balance being struck between the rights of the individual to due process and the rights of the citizenry to justice is, given our “political elite”, zero. They are like the government of the Ançien Régime of pre-revolutionary France of whom Winston Churchill said in his “History of the English-Speaking Peoples”: — “They could neither work the machine nor would they alter it.”

Donal Ryan

Mallow

Co Cork