EU leaders should back Kenny on ECB

How demeaning it is to our democracy, and how chillingly illustrative of where power really lies, that Taoiseach Enda Kenny has had to intervene to request the European Central Bank to attend our banking inquiry.

It is hard to imagine that Chancellor Merkel or even Prime Minister David Cameron would be so disdainfully treated. European solidarity indeed.

How very shabby, how very energising it is for the cynics who argue that European democracy and accountability are illusions celebrated in a manifesto promising co-operation, mutual respect and solidarity but ones that have no real meaning or weight when they really matter.

If the European Central Bank, in theory an organisation controlled by the European parliament, feels free to dismiss a national Government’s request that it attend an inquiry, even a feeble one that cannot impose sanctions or even make adverse findings of fact if they are contested, it is a good indication of how very forceful that organisation might have been during save-the-country negotiations with the Department of Finance when we were at our most vulnerable.

The ECB reluctance to attend, though it may yet change its mind and pay our parliament the honour of answering very valid and important questions, suggests an aloofness entirely inappropriate and dangerously damaging to the cause of the European project.

It also adds weight to the accusations of an ever-growing democratic deficit at the heart of the EU.

This is not to suggest that we overestimate our importance in the grand scheme of European integration but it is a very disheartening illustration for all of the smaller, less influential member states of how the super bureaucrats running the EU imagine themselves beyond the reach of national parliaments and the legitimate questions they might have about how we interact with EU institutions.

The consequences of this rebuff go far beyond its impact on the belated banking inquiry.

It has already been acknowledged that the inquiry faces huge challenges if it is to penetrate the fog around our banking collapse.

That so many years have passed, that so many legal limits have been imposed, that the looming election is a guillotine that will immediately end proceedings, that central players may seek refuge in the courts to protect themselves and thereby delay the inquiry all make for a far from ideal scenario.

The ECB’s indication that it will not participate just adds to the sense that the inquiry is far too little and far too late.

Its conclusions may not establish what actually happened before and during our banking crisis to any greater degree than is already known.

That would further undermine our battered and bruised political institutions and bring their effectiveness into even greater question.

The great tragedy of that is that it would probably, after the next election, lead to an even more dysfunctional and fractured parliament.

Europe’s political leaders understand the consequences this kind of change would have if replicated across the EU so they should, in the nicest possible way, suggest to the ECB they should go to Dublin and answer predictable questions.