Minister for Defence Willie O'Dea has called for rigorous legal sanctions against anyone who may be found guilty of any crimes in bank scandals which overshadowed this week's State bailout of AIB and Bank of Ireland.
He said the Director of Corporate Enforcement can seek the assistance of gardai as part of his investigation into some of the recent controversies.
"The guards already have been called in, in effect," said Mr O'Dea.
"The procedure is thorough, it is methodical and it can have the most serious consequences for those who are found to have misbehaved," he said on RTÉ radio.
"And if those people, some of whom have damaged the international reputation of this country and imperilled the livelihood of every man, woman and child in this country, if they are found to be in breach of the law then I hope they'll suffer the full rigours the law provides for," Mr O'Dea said.
He did not specifically point to any institution or individual.
The Financial Regulator said on Friday it had found certain transactions between Irish Life & Permanent and Anglo Irish Bank "completely unacceptable" and sent investigators to the offices of the two institutions with a brief to complete their work "with extreme urgency".
IL&P's chief executive Denis Casey, finance director Peter Fitzpatrick and head of treasury David Gantly resigned this week after the group revealed it had made €7.45 billion in short-term deposits to Anglo Irish Bank in September.
IL&P had said its senior directors were only acting to support Anglo Irish during a period of unprecedented crisis, when world credit markets were buckling.
It said the transactions were fully and appropriately accounted for in its books and records and in its regular reports and returns to the financial regulator.
But the regulator had been investigating whether Anglo Irish, nationalised last month after a separate directors' loan scandal, used the funds to artificially boost its financial health.
The deposit revelations at Anglo Irish eclipsed efforts this week to restore some credibility to the banking sectorand the wider economy with a €7 billion euro bailout for the two top two lenders, Bank of Ireland and AIB.
Anglo Irish Bank said on Friday it was conducting a comprehensive review of the transactions and confirmed that it had "sought and received deposits" from IL&P during 2008, including the last two weeks of September.
It said all transactions have been appropriately recorded in its books and records and financial statements and in its daily, weekly and monthly regulatory returns.
Separately, former Anglo Irish Bank chairman Sean FitzPatrick admitted in December he had misled investors about €84 million euros in loans from the bank. His statement helped trigger the bank's nationalisation in January.
When he resigned Mr FitzPatrick said he had not in any way breached banking or legal regulations, but his actions had been "unacceptable from a transparency point of view".
The chief executive of the financial regulator, Patrick Neary, retired early at the end of January over the handling of the directors' loan scandal at Anglo.
Mr FitzPatrick has been invited to appear before an Oireachtas committee hearing next week, but it was unclear if he would attend.
The Government Chief Whip Pat Carey said he believed the Dáil would be willing to quickly grant the Oireachtas Economic and Regulatory Affairs Committee powers to compel banking executives to appear before it.
Anglo Irish Bank auditors Ernst & Young have refused to appear before this committee .
Mr Carey said today: "I believe that the Dáil would be anxious to assist that the ... committee would be empowered to carry out an investigation but the terms of reference would have to be very, very tightly framed."
Reuters