Banking inquiry should finish work before election, Burton says

Tánaiste Joan Burton has said the Oireachtas banking inquiry should be allowed to complete its work before a general election takes place.

The inquiry has been granted an extension to the period in which it must complete its report into the evidence it heard on the State’s banking crash, with the window for this now running until January rather than November.

Asked about speculation that the general election could take place earlier than this, Ms Burton replied that it was “important really from the point of view of politics that we should allow the inquiry to complete its course.”

“Everybody in Government is very conscious that we made a priority of the banking inquiry. Under Dáil rules the banking inquiry now has an extension into January,” she said.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Ms Burton had a conversation on Tuesday night following increased conjecture about a November election.

Speaking to reporters after attending a jobs announcement in Dublin, Ms Burton revealed her conversation with Mr Kenny was “long” and “very friendly”.

“I think we know we have a job of work to do and we’re committed to doing it,” she added.

Ms Burton was asked if she remained convinced Mr Kenny was still committed to holding the election next year.

“All I can say that our conversations were very similar to all the other conversations that we’ve had, focused on doing the job we asked and invited people to elect us to do and we want to see it through,” she said.

Ms Burton said three pieces of legislation had to be passed to implement the arrangements for the budget, which will be announced next Tuesday.

The first was a “fairly lengthy” Finance Bill, the second was the Social Welfare Bill and the third was “probably the most complex of them all”, related to the wind-down of the Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest (Fempe) Act.

“Each of those is an absolute commitment of the Government and each of those will be passed in due course,” she said.

Speaking earlier, Mr Kenny joked that the electoral cycle might be extended.

“Actually its seven years in the Constitution but convention says it’s five,” he said.

Mr Kenny, Ms Burton and Minister for Jobs Richard Bruton participated in the announcement of 200 jobs in Workday’s new European headquarters office in Dublin 7.

Workday is a provider of enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources.