Economy

Public Accounts Committee to Publish Key Documents on Bank Guarantee Decision




15th July 2010



Following a meeting in private session this morning with the Secretary General of the Department of Finance, the D il Public Accounts Committee (PAC) intends to publish the documents it received from the Department which provide information on the contingency planning that went on in the Department in the 9 months leading up to the implementation of the bank guarantee scheme on 29th September 2008.



The Committee has also decided to convene a special public meeting next Thursday morning with the Secretary General of the Department of Finance, Kevin Cardiff. The Committee wants to question Mr Cardiff and the senior Departmental officials on the way the Department assembled the key facts that led to the guarantee.



It intends to place the documents on the Oireachtas website, www.oireachtas.ie tomorrow (16th).



Committee Chairman, Bernard Allen TD said;

“The Committee has decided that in the public interest, and in order to ensure full accountability of the role the Department played in managing the banking crisis that this critical information should be made freely available. Therefore, we have made a decision to put these documents in the public domain.



Furthermore, the Committee will reconvene next Thursday and has called the Secretary General of the Department of Finance and the relevant officials to the meeting where we will question them in public.



This meeting will examine the flow of information into the Department and the way it scrutinised the various options open to the State to ensure that there was not a collapse of the banking system."



Today’s deliberations are part of the Public Accounts Committee’s investigation concerning the collapse of the Irish banking system. It has already met with the Financial Regulator, Department of Finance and the National Treasury Management Agency.