FG tables motion of no confidence in Cowen
Fine Gael has tabled a motion of no confidence in Taoiseach Brian Cowen.
However it will be next Tuesday before it is debated and voted on, because the Government has ordered no votes in the house next week.
Party leader Enda Kenny said he put down the motion because he says the two reports into the banking crisis published yesterday lay the blame for the financial collapse at the door of Mr Cowen, then finance minister.
Deputy Kenny challenged the Government through Tánaiste Mary Coughlan to deal with the confidence of the current Taoiseach today.
Findings by former International Monetary Fund officials Klaus Regling and Max Watson in one report published yesterday delivered a major blow to the Taoiseach.
In a second damning report, Central Bank governor Patrick Honohan also blames reckless banking chiefs and the financial regulator for being afraid to “spoil the party”.
Mr Cowen has said he takes full responsibility for his role as former finance minister in the run-up to the crisis and accepted he did not take the right actions to prevent it.
But the Taoiseach refused to shoulder all the blame and insisted many mistakes made were based on fundamentally flawed projections from the Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the OECD.
Published simultaneously 10 days after being handed to the Government, the two reports will kick-start an official inquiry into the banking crisis to be set up by the end of the month.
In his probe, Prof Honohan said banking chiefs, the Government and the financial services watchdog were responsible for a “credit-fuelled property market and construction frenzy” that was central to the catastrophe.
The failure of investment bank Lehman Brothers was not responsible for the crisis, he found.
Meanwhile, Mr Regling and Mr Watson said alarm bells should have sounded over the property bubble and reckless lending from as far back as 2003.
Their report found that careful management of the public finances and banking sector could have helped steer the country towards a “soft landing” when the recession came.
But rather than keeping a tight control on the boom, the Government spent the money – from taxes on property and consumer spending – as it came in with give-away Budgets while tax cuts left the State coffers in an “increasingly fragile” position, according to the investigation.
