Anglo – 'Not one banker has gone to jail in five years,' Gerry Adams tells Dáil

» John Hedges

An Phoblacht Editor

‘If I go into Dunnes Stores and steal to feed my family I end up before the courts, yet if bankers deliberately defraud the state, boast about it, laugh about it, boast about their meetings with ministers, it will be okay’

“IT’S FIVE YEARS since this shameful episode,” Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams TD reminded Taoiseach Enda Kenny in the Dáil, “and not one banker has served one day of a prison sentence for their role in bankrupting the state.”

Deputy Adams was speaking during Leaders’ Questions on Tuesday 25 June, two days after the start of publication by the Irish Independent of in-house tape recordings of phone calls between executives at Anglo Irish Bank in 2008.

Ordinary citizens know that if they don’t pay the Government’s taxes or their TV licence then they face certain prosecution, Gerry Adams said – why not bankers?

He said that it was clear from that day’s news reports that Anglo bosses such as CEO David Drumm were meeting ministers at the highest levels in the Fianna Fáil-led government but which ministers in a Cabinet that included current Fianna Fáil leader Mícheál Martin?

“We don’t need an inquiry to find that out,” Gerry Adams said. “Mícheál Martin, his frontbench and others who were in government at that time can tell us who those ministers were.”

He added that, despite Sinn Féin representations, “theses banking elites” were rewarded by the Fine Gael/Labour Government under Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore.

“Twenty-two of the top 50 executives were kept in place. Some of them were given €175,000 a year. David Drumm was given a bonus of nearly €700,000!”

Continuing to address the Fine Gael Taoiseach, the Louth TD continued:“The Fianna Fáil government allowed this to happen but your government continued to protect these bankers and their high-paid jobs. So why, Taoiseach, is there a delay in bringing prosecutions? Would you ask the Minister for Justice to seek a report on this?”

Referring to Alan Shatter’s use of Garda information against political opponents in the Dáil, Gerry Adams asked if the Minister for Justice can spend his time coming into the Dáil to repeat “tittle-tattle” then why can’t he report on Garda investigations into these matters.

He added that he is “astounded” that Minister for Finance Michael Noonan (right) says he did not know about the existence of the Anglo tapes

“That begs the question: if he didn’t know, why didn’t he know?”Where is the Criminal Assets Bureau in all this, Gerry Adams asked, where bankers have defrauded the state and “put scores of thousands of young people across the globe” who have had to emigrate because of their actions, “who have put hundreds of thousands on the dole queues”.

The Government has proven there are two laws, Gerry Adams said, one for citizens and another for bankers and the elite.

“If I go into Dunnes Stores and steal to feed my family I end up before the courts, yet if bankers deliberately defraud the state, boast about it, laugh about it, boast about their meetings with ministers, it will be okay.”

They were right when they said their bank would be nationalised and they’d get five years out of it, Gerry Adams said. “And then they got their bonuses. Taoiseach, with respect, the buck stops with you. What are you and your government going to do about this?”

The Taoiseach replied:

“The buck stops with the Government. I’m going after them.”

We’ll see.