Inquiry now seems an inevitability - Demands for Nama investigation

THE momentum gathering demands for a commission of inquiry into the sale Nama’s €1.6bn Northern Ireland loan book seems to have gathered an undeniable force. 

All of the usual criteria are in place and, despite our sorry, credibility-destroying history, stretching across a litany of public inquiries, the Nama allegations demand another.

No action has been taken on the 2011 findings of the Moriarty Tribunal that payments were made to secure a state phone licence; the only person brought before a judge following the explosive beef tribunal was a journalist who first reported abuses in the sector. We are, it seems, far better at asking questions than acting decisively on uncomfortable answers. Sometimes we are not even good at facing up to challenging questions as the dismissive, nothing-to-see-here responses to Deputy Mick Wallace’s early Dáil questions on Nama’s Northern adventures show. Concessions of recent days and weeks have vindicated his campaign, one that, like an unwanted litter of unloved mongrel pups, might have been drowned at birth but for his persistence. Mr Wallace’s record is not without blemish but in this instance he has indeed done the State some service.