Findings must lead to real action - The banking inquiry reports

ANYONE who enjoys black humour, that revealing and cathartic safety valve, will have been tickled by the coincidence that the Hollywood film about the 2008 banking collapse The Big Short reached Irish cinemas in the week our long-delayed and greatly constrained banking inquiry was expected to publish some, but only some, of its conclusions.

It would be very surprising if this report — one of several, coming eight years after the horse bolted — was sensationally revealing. It, like so many of its predecessors, will unfortunately, more than likely, fall into the two-day wonder it-really-makes-no-difference category.

The report’s authors were so constrained and so stymied by individuals’ and institutions’ “right to confidentiality” defences, and a trail long gone stale, that a critical analysis that might have been a rich and filling stew well worth digesting will surely turn out to be pretty thin soup. And cold soup at that.