COMMENT

I HAVEN’T been feeling the best since the emergence of the Anglo tapes last week – and I suspect I’m not alone in this.

As difficult as it was to read the transcripts in the Irish Independent, it was a somewhat surreal experience to actually listen to the audio clips that laid bare the culture of conceit and self-preservation at Anglo.

The tapes confirmed what we already largely suspected: that Anglo Irish Bank was run on its own terms and played by its own rules. If they had that sort of contempt for the Government and the Central Bank – not to mention the UK and Germany – just imagine how little they cared about the humble taxpayer who would ultimately pick up the tab.

What really sickens me, though, apart from the disgraceful behaviour of the Anglo executives recorded, is all this talk about the need for a banking inquiry. This, surely, is the last thing we want: politicians trying to get to the bottom of a situation that other politicians didn’t understand back in those dark days and nights of September 2008.

The outcome of any inquiry will probably conclude something along these lines:

‘Government of the day duped by unscrupulous bankers into making disastrous decisions that have condemned future generations of Irish people to emigration, long-term unemployment, house repossessions and straddled them with a lifetime of debt. Light-touch regulation was a factor and politicians ran around like headless chickens’.

We pretty much know this already so any such inquiry would just be throwing good money after bad. In any case, many key members of the Cabinet of the time – and even the former Taoiseach Brian Cowen – are no longer involved in politics. The Minister for Finance of the day, Brian Lenihan, has since passed away. Can an inquiry into the role politics played in this sorry debacle have any real meaning in his absence?

In reality, the only inquiry that matters is a Garda inquiry. The Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation needs to be given extra resources by the State to allow for a full and thorough investigation of any alleged wrongdoing at Anglo to take its course.

But don’t expect immediate results. We do things slowly in this country. Except, it seems, when it comes to bailing out bust financial institutions.