Banking inquiry to invite Trichet to speak at public forum

The Oireachtas banking inquiry is discussing arrangements for former European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet to give a speech in Dublin on Ireland’s economic crash.

The plan is not yet settled and many uncertainties remain, but the talks centre on the possibility of Mr Trichet giving a public speech at the Institute of International and European Affairs and taking questions from the audience.

The audience would include TDs and Senators from the inquiry, meaning they would have an opportunity to ask questions of Mr Trichet on the ECB’s role in the debacle.

Legal standing

At issue in the main is the legal standing of whatever Mr Trichet says. The inquiry has sought legal advice on whether it could admit his observations as formal evidence which could be used when questioning witnesses and in its ultimate report.

“Since the intervention of the Taoiseach earlier this year, the committee has been working on a process to engage both with the ECB and Mr Trichet, the purpose of which is to complete the fullest picture as to what happened during the crisis period and to ensure that as many pieces of the jigsaw are put together,” said Ciarán Lynch, the Labour TD who is chairman of the inquiry.

“We are currently exploring this avenue to create a dialogue in a manner which meets the committee’s requirement in order that the engagement would be admissible as evidence to the inquiry in the terms of its work.”

The objective is to provide a forum in which the inquiry would hear from the former ECB chief without him submitting to the panel’s authority. Mr Trichet was president of the ECB at the time of the Irish bank guarantee in 2008 and, in 2010, when Ireland sought an EU-IMF bailout programme.

It is the position of both the ECB and Mr Trichet that the bank is accountable to the European Parliament and not to national parliaments such as the Oireachtas.

‘Informal exchange’

As a result, the ECB is willing only to engage in “an informal exchange of views” with the Oireachtas on the crash.

Mr Trichet’s successor Mario Draghi has indicated that ECB deputy president Vítor Constâncio “stands ready” to represent the bank in an exchange with a committee or committees of the Irish parliament, but only if the engagement takes place outside the forum of the inquiry itself.

Mr Constâncio, former governor of the Portuguese central bank and the longest serving members of the ECB’s executive board, has been its deputy chief since 2010.