Donnelly’s withdrawal won’t sink bank inquiry

World of Politics with Harry McGee

The banking inquiry has turned into a terrible mess – but if truth be told, this fall has been long coming. And how we have got to here has provided a salutary lesson about politics.

It is often described as the art of the possible. That’s a rather posh way of saying when we promise something there’s absolutely no guarantee that it’s ever going to happen in the way you think it is.

The promise of a banking inquiry was one of the central planks of the Programme for Government. And why would it not have been?

Even three and a half years later, the memories have not completely faded of the febrile atmosphere that existed at the time. There was real raw anger – with the banks; with the speculators; with Fianna Fáil and the Greens in Government.

The IMF was in town and the descent into the fifth circle of economic hell had happened so quickly that people were struggling to understand. A lot of the heat and light in the debate during the election campaign had surrounded the granting of the blanket bank guarantee at the end of September in 2008.

Brian Cowen and his Cabinet said there was nothing else that happened that night that was material to the decision. The Opposition continued to voice suspicion. On the social media, the main theme (as ever) was conspiracy – I’d say over half the tweets these days are tapped out from a grassy knoll.

So it was not surprising the commitment to hold a banking inquiry was an imperative in the Programme for Government. Enda Kenny, recalling it in the Dáil recently, even quoted Albert Einstein: Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.

The problem with quoting Einstein is that if your plan is less than genius you are going to look silly.  The first approach to the runway was the referendum in October 2011 to extend the scope and powers of parliamentary inquiries.

The ability of parliament to investigate matters of great public controversy had been seriously curtailed following the judgement of the courts that a parliamentary inquiry into the Garda shooting of John Carthy in Abbeylara, Co Longford, had overstepped its mark.

After that, parliamentary investigations have been like a bird with clipped wings, unable to undertake meaningful inquiries because they could not make any adverse findings against an individual who wasn’t a member of the Oireachtas.

The problem with Brendan Howlin’s remedy was that he went too far the other way. He proposed to give parliamentary inquiries wide powers with the spectre being raised that they could almost operate a parallel system of justice to the courts. A focused attack late in the campaign by former Attorney Generals put paid to the referendum and it was back to square one.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.