Parliamentary inquiry the right forum to question Anglo chiefs, says Tánaiste

Directors and senior managers of the former Anglo Irish Bank should be questioned at a parliamentary inquiry, Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore has insisted in the Dáil.

He was responding to Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald, who asked why Anglo Irish Bank chairman Alan Dukes, a former Fine Gael leader, did not tell the Central Bank about the existence of taped conversations between senior executives.

Ms McDonald said a public inquiry was not required for the Government to put some “very straightforward questions” to Mr Dukes.

The Dublin Central TD asked why did Mr Dukes, appointed to represent the interests of the public, “sing dumb” about the tapes. She also asked if the Nyberg banking commission, which investigated the bank collapse, was supplied with the tapes of senior executives.

“We don’t need a banking inquiry to establish that,” she said. She said to Mr Gilmore: “I want to know and I want you to find out what the public interest director was doing. Why did Alan Dukes sing dumb? I don’t think that matter can wait.”

Noting the revelation that the conversations of 18 senior executives were taped, the Sinn Féin TD said, “it seems inconceivable that senior managers didn’t know about these tapes since the gardaí sought these tapes through court orders”.

She said Fianna Fáil could also easily ask one of its former senators, Aidan Eames, also a director of the bank, what he knew.

But Mr Gilmore insisted directors and senior managers of the former Anglo Irish Bank should be questioned in a parliamentary inquiry.

“I believe that those questions need to be asked and put to the people concerned in a public forum.”

He said millions of electronic documents and tens of thousands of hard-copy documents had been seized and a special liquidator was investigating how the tapes came to be leaked.

But he warned: “We have to be careful to avoid prejudicing any proceedings.”