List of key documents omitted in bank guarantee scheme published by PAC

THE DÁIL Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has published a list of more than 50 key documents relating to the Government’s bank guarantee scheme that were not provided to it by the Department of Finance.

PAC chairman Bernard Allen said the committee was “somewhat disappointed” not to receive “the full schedule of documents”.

Some 34 of the 56 items the PAC says are “relevant” to its work were not released because they contained or revealed legal advice from the Attorney General and are subject to legal privilege.

Mr Allen said the committee accepted this legal privilege. “However, I believe copies of the letters containing the questions which prompted the advice from the Attorney General should be made freely available to the committee,” he said.

Mr Allen said the PAC had received an undertaking from the department’s secretary general, Kevin Cardiff, to review each of the key documents not released. The PAC is hoping the department’s most senior civil servant will release certain documents with minor alterations.

The PAC chairman is also seeking information about who was present at a meeting between Anglo Irish Bank and the Department of Finance the week before the guarantee was announced. The PAC has been told former Anglo Irish Bank chief executive David Drumm was the sole bank representative at the meeting.

Earlier this month, the department released documents “which address the development of work and thinking in relation to contingency planning” from the beginning of 2008 to the implementation of the Government bank guarantee announced on September 30th of that year. It told the PAC there were “thousands of individual documents for September 2008 alone”.

The documents being sought by the PAC include items deemed to be “institution-specific” and subject to confidentiality.

The notes from six separate meetings between the Financial Regulator and Anglo Irish Bank, Bank of Ireland, AIB, EBS, Irish Nationwide and Irish Life Permanent on September 20th, 2008, were not released on grounds that they contained confidential information. E-mails dated late September from PricewaterhouseCoopers to the department in relation to the liquidity positions of the banks were not provided to the PAC either.

“In order for the committee to establish if the taxpayer has received value for money, we are keen to have access to all the relevant information,” Mr Allen said.

The PAC is meeting in September to discuss the documents relating to the implementation of the bank guarantee.