THE ROLES played by former taoiseach Brian Cowen and his minister for finance, Brian Lenihan, in dealing with the banking crisis may be the subject of an inquiry by a powerful new Oireachtas committees promised by the Government.
Minster for Social Protection Joan Burton said yesterday people in Ireland would not be able to move on from the “disastrous” banking crisis until such time as Mr Cowen, Mr Lenihan and Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin were subjected to an inquiry in public and “made answerable to the people of Ireland”.
She dismissed the claim by Mr Lenihan he had been betrayed by the European Central Bank (ECB) in the run-up to the international rescue deal last November, asserting that the bank only acted after it concluded it had been “lied to” by the then government.
Ms Burton said the Government has committed to holding a referendum later this year or early next year that will confer Oireachtas committees with real powers of inquiry and compellability.
Ms Burton said that without any further initiative, the people of Ireland would not know for 30 years what the government did, or did not do, on the banking crisis because such decisions are subject to laws of State secrecy.
She criticised the three secret inquiries that have been held to date, saying their terms of reference did not include the role of the government, nor indeed of the ECB, the European Commission or the International Monetary Fund, in contributing to, or dealing with, the banking crisis.
Ms Burton, speaking on RTÉ radio, said the latest report from Finnish banking expert Peter Nyberg had cost more than €1 million but “did not tell us anything that we were not aware of”.
She rejected the contention made by Mr Lenihan in a BBC documentary that he was betrayed by the ECB. “Brian Lenihan made two catastrophic errors. The first was the disastrous guarantee which he co-authored with Brian Cowen. Secondly he set Nama [the National Asset Management Agency] in train. That was not the best thing to do in the case of Ireland.”
