When the Oireachtas banking inquiry completes its work later this year, seven years will have elapsed since the onset of a banking crisis. This produced a fiscal crisis, which required a bailout by international lenders in 2010 to help resolve. To date the public has heard little adequate explanation from those centrally involved in that drama. Bankers, developers, and former government ministers have in the main kept their counsel; some (understandably) because they face legal action. That position is set to change, as the Oireachtas committee calls on many of the major figures in the banking crisis to explain their actions – or inactions – at that time.
Already four official reports have examined different aspects of the banking collapse, and identified serious oversight failures in key institutions – Central Bank, Financial regulator, Department of Finance, and the banks. The Oireachtas committee, in calling some former bankers and politicians as witnesses, is finally getting to the heart of the matter. It is trying to establish greater individual accountability for what happened, from those centrally involved in policy decisions either taken, or rejected, at banking or government level.
And the committee will be hoping the testimony offered by those – such as Michael Fingleton, former Irish Nationwide chief executive, Sean Fitzpatrick, former chairman of Anglo Irish Bank, and Brian Cowen, former taoiseach and others – can help complete the financial jigsaw.
Most public attention will focus on the actions of the key banking and political figures. But the committee is also right to call the opposition parties to account, and to question their parliamentary performance in challenging the prevailing consensus on the property boom. Likewise, the attendance at the committee of Ajai Chopra, who led the IMF team that negotiated the 2010 bailout, is welcome. He has criticised the role played by the European Central Bank (ECB) in pressing Ireland to accept a bailout, and his contribution will counter balance the recent speech in Dublin by the ECB's former chairman, Jean-Claude Trichet, and should help to clarify matters.