BRIAN Cowen came to the banking inquiry yesterday to make a few corrections on sums. Some people have “added two and two and got 20”, he told the inquiry early on. He was there to put them right.
His second day before the inquiry dealt with his turbulent time as taoiseach. It’s also a period out of which various rumours have solidified into fact. Like the one that the bank guarantee overseen by Cowen delivered the country into austerity.
Or the “well known fact” that Cowen over-ruled Brian Lenihan’s wish to nationalise Anglo Irish Bank, rather than guarantee it.
advertisement
Or the one about Seán Quinn’s brother Peter ringing Cowen while he mulled over the guarantee in Government Buildings.
And of course it’s pure gospel that Cowen was in the pocket of the bankers, intent on looking out for their interests, rather than discharging his duty to the nation as a whole.
Cowen dealt with all these issues, which ranged from the ludicrous to the plain wrong. His demeanour yesterday was in contrast to how he appeared last week to rake over his time as minister for finance. Then, he started out in bullish form, later lapsing into the unsure, slouchy figure which he had become in the final months of his tenure as taoiseach.
Brian Cowen was less emphatic about his links with economist Alan Gray, who also dealt with David Drumm and Sean FitzPatrick.
Yesterday, he was more assured, more steady and with good reason. At one stage he reached for the metaphor of an ambulance in explaining the actions that led to the bank guarantee. He was behind the wheel. He is far more comfortable talking about Taoiseach Cowen than Minister Cowen who contributed to the disaster that required the presence of an ambulance.
He echoed others who were present on the night of September 29, 2008, that the guarantee was a “least worst option” based on the assumption that the banks were not bust, but unable to access cash.
He didn’t accept that enough due diligence had not been conducted on the banks prior to giving the guarantee, pointing out that PWC went into the banks in the weeks afterwards and emerged with much the same analysis on liquidity that had informed the decision on September 29.
In recent months, much has been made of an alleged dispute between him and Lenihan on the night in question, with the latter wanting to nationalise Anglo Irish Bank, rather than guarantee it.
The subtext of this narrative casts Lenihan as having a better grasp of the situation, and Cowen as being intent on implementing a decision that was more favourable to the people who ran Anglo.
Apart from such a scenario having zero basis in fact, the idea that nationalising Anglo would have saved the citizens much money, or alleviated any of the austerity that was to follow, is largely bogus. (Anglo was nationalised three months later in any event.) But these are the kind of received wisdoms that have drifted into the public consciousness in the search for a smoking gun.
There was no rancour between him and Lenihan on the night in question, he asserted. “We were talking the issues through. Both of us were deliberating with each other and striving to find the best course of action for the country at this point,” he said.
Later, he praised the other man. “Brian had a tough job and he did it very well,” he said.
Susan O’Keeffe asked whether he’d taken a call from Seán Quinn’s brother Peter on the night in question.
“No,” he said, batting off one of the crazier rumours from the period.
His position was less emphatic on other matters. He said he rang economist Alan Gray on the night in question to get an outside opinion of the situation. Hours earlier, Seán FitzPatrick and David Drumm had called into Gray’s office as they toured Dublin on their “buddy, can you spare a dime” desperate bid to save Anglo.
Cowen was asked whether Gray told him of the earlier visit. “No,” Cowen replied. That is strange, to say the least.
A few months earlier, in July 2008, Cowen’s old pal and former Anglo director Fintan Drury had, at Cowen’s request, gathered a group to discuss the deteriorating economy at the Mount Juliet golf resort. Fitzpatrick and Gray were there. Cowen said there was no discussion about banking at the meeting, which Pearce Doherty suggested “stretched credulity”.
The witness said it was an informal get-together to discuss the economy, not the bank.
“As God is my witness that’s the truth,” he said.
There was less controversy around the bailout period in November 2010. This country was “bounced” into it, but the inquiry has repeatedly heard from other witnesses that we would have ended up as a protectorate of the Troika within months one way or the other.
Another long day of evidence failed to release a whiff of cordite. There may have been mistakes here and there in the white heat of his time as taoiseach, as the country grasped for survival. Proper contingency for disaster was sadly lacking in the first months of his tenure.
Anglo could have been nationalised when the other banks were guaranteed, purely on the basis that the management had run the bank into the ground and had to be removed.
On some occasions, he appears to have shown a serious lack of curiosity about what was unfolding around him.
But most of Cowen’s big mistakes were made when he oversaw the finance portfolio, before donning the paramedic’s uniform.
Over the two days, Cowen put his hand up in relation to some of his actions and held tough as far as others, particularly in finance, were concerned. He also called to mind the fact that here was a highly intelligent politician who was well capable of dealing with anything thrown at him by the inquiry committee.
In different times, under different circumstances, he may well have left a political legacy far removed from that which the short view has bestowed on him.
Michael Clifford
No comments:
Post a Comment