Sinn Féin hands over new secret Anglo tapes to Garda

Sinn Féin today announced it had anonymously received recordings of more telephone conversations involving senior officials at Anglo Irish Bank.

The party's finance spokesman Pearse Doherty said the recordings "are not currently" in the public domain and took place between February and September of 2008, the period in the lead up to the introduction of the bank guarantee by the then Fianna Fáil and Green Party coalition.

The recordings were delivered anonymously to the Sinn Féin offices on a memory stick two weeks ago.

Mr Doherty said the party had made the recordings available to An Garda Síochána and the Central Bank but, on the basis of legal advice, it had decided not to publish the tapes at this stage. A Garda spokesman said the tapes have been received and that they were being worked through. He said there was no further comment at this time.

Mr Doherty said he had personally delivered the tapes to Garda headquarters and the Central Bank’s office this morning.

“We have also retained a copy with my solicitor with a view to publishing them at a future date, as the publication of these secret conversations are in the public interest,” he said.

Mr Doherty said the Government must urgently proceed with the establishment of a banking inquiry as there was “a public demand for truth” and as people wanted to know what was going on inside the banks and between them and the then government.

Legislation paving the way for such an inquiry came into effect in September and Minister for Public Expenditure Brendan Howlin said an inquiry could provide long-awaited answers for the public “who need and deserve” to hear the views of those who witnessed the State’s financial collapse.

He said it had always been his view that the Fianna Fáil government had more information relating to the banks prior to the guarantee than it had previously disclosed.

Mr Doherty was speaking during the debate on the Finance Bill which was introduced in the House by Minister for Finance Michael Noonan this morning.

Earlier this year, the publication of a series of taped phone calls from Anglo Irish Bank made headlines both in Ireland and abroad.

The conversations, involving figures such as the bank’s former chief executive David Drumm, gave an insight into the thinking of senior staff in the lead up to the bank guarantee and the bailout of the bank, which has cost the State in the region of €30 billion.

In the recordings, published by the Irish Independent, Anglo Irish Bank executives were ordered to go down to the Central Bank with “arms swinging” to demand a multi-billion euro bailout to prevent a bank collapse.

The recordings, published by the Irish Independent, indicated the lender planned to seek an initial €7 billion from the Central Bank because a commitment of that size would make the authorities unwilling to let it fail, while not being too big to cause the central bank to hesitate in backing the bank. The executives denied any wrong doing.