SEANAD REPORT:SENATOR SHANE Ross (Ind) demanded to know why the Financial Regulator had not been sacked by the Minister for Finance.
For the last four or five years the banks had been allowed by the regulator to lend cash on 100 per cent loans, and to lend to property developers to whom they should not have loaned any money. They had gone absolutely berserk. There was only one body that could stop that and that was the Financial Regulator, which had been asleep on the job.
"There's absolutely no evidence of a change of personnel or a change of regulation at this stage. Let's forget about the fact that depositors are being under-written. The same problem is going to be there tomorrow and the banks are going to be just as insolvent tomorrow, with the same loans and the same property developers into them for huge amounts of money. How is that going to be tackled, because that's going to come up and bite us next week when we have realised that the depositors are all right?" Senator Ross asked.
Mr Ross said he saw very little point in an appeal for political bipartisanship on the issue. He regretted the chorus of congratulation from Government benches for what the Minister had done. "I think it's ridiculous to get up and congratulate him on his speedy performance and his actions."
Senator Eugene Regan (FG) said the Government's action was welcome and was a necessary measure to safeguard the banking system in Ireland.
However, he believed the lesson to be learned from the handling of the problem was that the Government acted on such matters only when its back was to the wall and it had no option but to act.
Labhrás Ó Murchú (FF) said a clear message from the Republican and Democrat sides in the US, where the bailout bill had failed to pass, was that the decision was based more on politics than on legislative consideration.