Dail Committee to probe collapse of banking system
Issued : 18 September 2009
Irish Independent
The Dail Public Accounts Committee (PAC) pledged yesterday to examine the failure of regulation in the Irish banking system in the course of the coming year. The Comptroller and Auditor General will complete a special report in the autumn into what went wrong with regulation and the steps that need to be put in place to avoid a repeat of the crisis.
Committee chairman Bernard Allen said: "We will want to examine how the IMF, the UK and the EU approach to regulation differs from ours. I feel this must be the starting point of any examination of the banking sector."
He added that the committee would be calling key players from the Department of Finance and the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) before it to explain what had been done to date to stabilise the banks. "I know that other Oireachtas committees have broader terms of reference than the Committee of Public Accounts and, therefore, may be in a position to inquire into specific elements of banking activity that will not cut across the work of the PAC," said Mr Allen.
The scope of the PAC inquiry appears to fall short of the full-scale probe being demanded by a number of parties over the past month into the virtual collapse of the banking system a year ago.
UCD economist Colm McCarthy, author of the recent 'Bord Snip' report on public spending cuts; the IBOA Finance Union; and the Green Party have all called for a Dirt-style inquiry.
Joe Brennan
