Banking inquiry needs to be on the money

Amid the unfolding political mess, there is a need to hear from those behind the bank guarantee, says Gerard Howlin

ONLY incompetence can explain how a government elected to clean up the mess of its predecessor is now up to its waist in the very same dung heap it promised to sweep from the stables.

Yet this is where the Government is in relation to its proposed banking inquiry. We might pause to remember the consequences of the fateful decisions made by the last government on the bank guarantee in 2008 and the backdrop of improvident policy that contributed to those decisions. These are costs that will be borne for a generation.