End ‘No Blame - No Shame’ culture in politics and banking

People need to see the successful prosecution of wrong-doers in banking and financial services before they can re-gain confidence in the system, Senator Dan Boyle said today.

Addressing the MacGill Summer School in Glenties, Co Donegal, the Green Party Finance spokesperson said progress required a prompt end to the culture of ‘No Blame – No Shame.’

He said this culture – in both politics and the public service – meant there was no challenge to the serious wrongdoing and rank incompetence which characterised Irish banking through the past decade.

The Green Party Chairman said we had become sadly familiar with what he called the ‘Byzantine world of Irish banking’ in the recent past. “The twin peaks of incompetence and illegality have been scaled with a frightening regularity. There is a public hunger for prosecutions, which I hope will happen, but it will be difficult because of the failures of regulation to date,” Senator Boyle said.

He said that Irish people, living in a small country where many people knew each other, always had difficulty publicly challenging problems. Irish banking had changed very rapidly in the 1990s from a small, very conservative operation to a huge multinational business which went largely unregulated.

Irish bank bosses were hugely arrogant and dismissed warnings. He and other Green Party politicians, Eamon Ryan and Trevor Sargent, met senior bankers before the 2007 general election and expressed their fears about property market overheating and potential mass loan defaulting.

“The response to our concerns was that we didn’t understand banking and that everything in the garden was rosy,” Senator Boyle recalled.

The Green Party Senator said the culture of ‘No Blame – No Shame’ extended across the Irish public service and into Irish politics. He was surprised that he was the first person to publicly call for the resignation of Financial Regulator – not a member of the Opposition parties.

He said the regulation system under the Irish Financial Services Regulatory Authority had failed to deliver for a number of reasons. There were not enough resources; staff salaries were too low to keep skilled staff; and a key factor was the failure to enact many of the tougher regulatory provisions of the legislation.

He said former Progressive Democrat Leader, Michael McDowell, had a role in framing the law and that former Finance Minister, Charlie McCreevy, promised new and bolder regulation. “It is hard to imagine that argument now and keep a straight face,” Senator Boyle said.

The Green Party Finance spokesperson called for the prompt appointment of a new Financial Regulator and the inclusion of overseas experts in the planned Central Banking Commission to promote international best practice in Ireland’s financial affairs.