IT WAS incumbent on any Bank of Ireland official who may have been told two years ago that Anglo Irish Bank was insolvent to report the matter now to the Garda, Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan has said.

The Minister was responding to a report in the RTÉ documentary series Freefalllast Monday night that Anglo Irish Bank was on the brink of insolvency in September 2008 and had sought to be taken over by Bank of Ireland at the same time that the Government was preparing to introduce the blanket guarantee scheme.

“I would be very much obliged if anyone in Bank of Ireland who has knowledge of any person from Anglo Irish Bank saying they were insolvent on the 29th of September 2008, if they would immediately bring that information to the attention of the Garda Síochána,” Mr Lenihan said yesterday.

In the course of a briefing on the Government’s new plan to divide Anglo into a deposit bank and an asset recovery institution, Mr Lenihan was asked if the Government was aware of any approach to Bank of Ireland by Anglo, reportedly made two years ago this month.

He assumed that, at the time, “it was represented to the regulatory system of the Central Bank that this was a solvent bank and clearly there would have been statutory declarations and other formal documentation confirming that fact, and accounts, indeed, presented by the bank subsequent to that and signed off by the directors, confirming that the bank was solvent”.