FED UP with waiting around for gardaí and the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE) to interview him about the flattering €7 billion circular deposits between Irish Life Permanent and Anglo Irish Bank in the run-up to the latter’s nationalisation, former ILP boss Denis Casey last week sought to move matters along.

The sworn statement he sent to the Garda and the ODCE – 17 months into their investigations – provides an insight on relations between the two financial groups at the time.

ILP never engaged in lending for speculative property development, he said in the affidavit, and, given the different nature of their respective businesses, the company “did not have a close corporate relationship with Anglo”.

Casey explains that ILP's relationship with Anglo became "strained" in September 2008 as he believed Anglo had been "responsible for causing certain articles to appear" in the Sunday Tribuneon September 21st, "which I believe were potentially damaging to Irish Life Permanent".

The articles followed a rejection by ILP of a merger proposal made by Anglo the previous week, he added.

We now know that Anglo was pushing for some sort of merger, first with Irish Nationwide and later with ILP, in an act of self- preservation as deposits were flying out the door at the peak of the global financial crisis.

Casey’s affidavit is helpful in trying to make sense of the events that rocked Irish banking in 2008. It also begs an important question though. If relations were so bad between the two institutions, why then did ILP help Anglo out of its hole in late September 2008?