NIB's conduct 'outrageous', says Harney

National Irish Bank executives criticised by High Court inspectors should never again hold jobs in the Irish financial services industry, the Tánaiste, Ms Harney, has said.

Describing the bank's conduct as "outrageous", she held out hope that criminal prosecutions could be taken against some of the individuals identified.

The public must have confidence in the banking system, she said.

"It can't have confidence in institutions that behave in this fashion.

"We have very, very strong laws. I am not aware of any gaps in legislation that might make it easier for the authorities to sustain a prosecution.

"That is a matter for the courts. We have to be careful not to intervene in an area that is the sole preserve of the courts, but I think the public will want to see action.

"The only way that you can successfully do it is by taking action against those that have been responsible," she said, shortly after she received the report.

Despite NIB's offences, it should not lose its banking licence, she said.

"If the licence were withdrawn it would be the ordinary customers that would suffer.

"They have suffered enough. Why would we want to do that? Secondly, I want to say that there is a new culture in the bank, there is a new management team in the bank. They are working very hard to make sure that this can never happen again and I have total confidence in that new management team at NIB to see the bank through all of this."

Questioned about the lessons to be drawn from the affair, the Tánaiste said: "I think the lesson to be drawn is that nobody is getting away with this kind of behaviour.

"In the past, perhaps, when matters of this kind came to light they might have been covered up.

"We now know that there is going to be no hiding place for those who help others to evade taxes, or do so themselves and that there is, hopefully, going to be no role in any financial institution for people who behaved in this fashion.

"The officers of this bank have behaved in a disgraceful fashion. The new mechanisms that we have put in place to deal with company law have the teeth, clout and the will to ensure that this culture ends."

Urging financial institutions to set up internal "whistle-blowing" systems, she said the NIB scandal had emerged because staff had leaked information.

"That is often the case with many of the unsavoury matters that came into the public domain," said Ms Harney, who sought the appointment of the inspectors six years ago.

Though corporate regulation has improved dramatically over recent years, she said "the best investigative systems in the world" could still "miss things".

"You rely very heavily on internal processes. What I would like to see to happen and I believe it is necessary and some institutions are doing this so there are mechanisms internally where people can bring to light, without fear of being harmed in any way from a career point of view, wrongdoing that they have come across."

The NIB scandal could not happen again in the same way: "It certainly could not happen again without the board of directors being aware of it.

"I certainly think that this is a major blow to the kind of confidence that we have in banks, particularly the fact that the bank was thieving on our money.

"Because that is what is happening here, in addition to tax evasion which is very serious, the bank was overcharging people.

"In other words it was taking people's money and even when it came to the attention of senior people in the bank they were not prepared to do anything about it.

"The internal auditors became aware of it, the internal mechanisms in the bank of the time leave a lot to be desired because the board of directors were never made aware of what happened.

"The good thing now is that we have legislation in relation to auditing and accounting. There are new requirements on company directors that this could not happen.

"There has to be an audit committee of the board, an independent audit committee.

"This could not happen under the new law we have in place in Ireland now," she said.

"It was probably unreasonable pressure and that led to this behaviour and that is not acceptable, Ms Harney said."