A few months ago as the Banking Inquiry was kicking off, I spoke to a member of the committee who was trying to get psyched up for the thought of spending nine months in the windowless caverns of the Leinster House basement.
Professional observers like myself were sceptical about the prospect of getting any political ‘bounce’ out of the inquiry – if anything, committee members are suffering because they’re locked into the hearings for up to nine hours a day, and are legally bound from leaving the room while hearings are ongoing. Certainly, if Stephen Donnelly had remained on the inquiry team as originally planned, he would have had far less time to found the Social Democrats.
But the inquiry member was unbowed. They said, as long as there was one moment where someone was asked a difficult question and had to take a deep and anguished breath before replying, it would all be worth it.
The Banking Inquiry thus far hasn’t had a classic Gotcha moment to be immortalised in some future production of ‘Reeling in the Years’ – and realistically, with the former ministers from Fianna Fáil now having made their exits, only the dwindling number of Anglo veterans is likely to provide one.
But amid the complaints about ineffectiveness – and a justified feeling that the inquiry isn’t really teaching us much – I still think it’s been a worthwhile exercise.
Part of the problem for the inquiry is that it’s been so long in coming that many of the facts it would uncover are already in the public domain. Aside from the countless books, TV documentaries and newspaper reports, there’s been three different state-sanctioned inquiries from Patrick Honohan, Peter Nyberg, Klaus Regling and Max Watson. There is, objectively, little less to learn.
Had the referendum on Oireachtas Inquiries been approved in 2011, a banking probe would have been in place years earlier. The rejection of that referendum meant new laws had to be dreamt up and passed, by which time the Anglo trial had forced any tentative inquiry to be put on ice. An inquiry in 2012 might have felt far more opportune.
But the delay is not the fault of the inquiry – and if it took until late 2014 for public hearings to begin, the question has to be asked: would we rather a delayed public inquiry, or none at all?
In this novel case, the process is far more important than the outcome. The Oireachtas has historically been pretty slow on the uptake when it comes to dealing with matters of grave national concern. The Dáil ‘Topical Issues’ slot is regularly annexed by backbench TDs looking to raise local issues that don’t have a broader appeal, and is so over-subscribed that matters of genuine national concern rarely get a look in. Leaders’ Questions is meant to be the slot where the top issues of the day are dissected by party leaders, but the questions are dependent on the opposition leaders knowing what’s on the public’s mind. Often they can be weeks behind.
The one place where the Oireachtas has been doing well is in its committees leaping to action at any major public disquiet. Tomorrow the Health Committee under the stewardship of Jerry Buttimer will be examining the Eurosurgical scandal revealed by RTE’s Prime Time last week. The hearing would have been quicker but for the fact that the Dáil had gone into recess by the time the documentary was shown. In the last couple of years we’ve also had John Tierney and Irish Water being called before two committees in quick succession – the PAC and the Environment committee – to discuss its massive bills for consultants and its complex financial setup. A couple of weeks ago the PAC also called in NAMA, at relatively little notice, to discuss the concerns about the sale of its Northern Ireland loan portfolio. (The hearing raised more questions than it answered.)
I must personally admit that when the inquiry was first mooted I was among the (small) coterie of people suggesting a Tribunal should be pursued instead. The laws were already in place, the organs of the state already knew how to run one, and hearings would be open to the public. The only issue would be that hearings would not be generally televised – something that could easily be sorted out by making an explicit order in the terms of reference. Why no Tribunal? Because after Mahon and Moriarty, ‘Tribunal’ is a dirty word – and people are sick of inquiries costing hundreds of millions with damaging findings, but no prosecutions, coming afterwards.
That’s why the Banking Inquiry has to be seen in context – as the first step in our parliament learning how to walk again after the 2002 Abbeylara ruling that stopped parliamentary inquiries in their tracks. The banking inquiry might not be perfect, and we might not be learning a whole lot – but the sheer act of compelling important people to appear, and forcing them to answer your questions, is invaluable for a modern society.
And at €5m, it’s a snip compared to the cost of a Tribunal that was open only to those who had the time to go to Dublin Castle to watch it first-hand.
We might not appreciate it too much now, but whenever there’s another scandal in future that merits a full and transparent state inquiry, the Banking Inquiry could turn out to be much more useful than any of us ever expected.
