Eurolink News

Socialist Joe wants ‘real’ inquiry into financial crisis (21st January, 2010)

January 21, 2010 at 1:33 pm Leave a comment

Government and opposition parties have been accused of trying to foist the blame for the economic crisis on bad banking practices. Speaking in Strasbourg this week, Socialist MEP Joe Higgins criticised Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael as being equally responsible for creating a platform for the property bubble over decades of mismanagement and corruption. In a blistering one-minute speech to assembled MEPs at the European Parliament’s first plenary session of the year, Mr Higgins said the current debate in Ireland about a banking inquiry is missing the key point.
‘There is an underlying assumption that better regulation and prudent lending by the banks would have prevented the situation we are in. However, although the banking excesses aggravated the dramatic nature of the crash, the economic crisis is an inevitable part of a system built on the maximisation of profit by big business, developers and banks,’ he said.
Mr Higgins went on detail how developers ‘bought’ support from Ireland’s two biggest parties through bribes to councillors and ‘legitimate’ political donations, as he witnessed during his tenure in Dublin County Council and Fingal County Council.
The Dublin MEP called for any inquiry into banking to examine the ‘root factors’ behind the crash, including what he says was the absence of statutory control over the price of building land. ‘If there is an inquiry, it should be comprehensive – taxpayers won’t accept a cover-up,’ he concluded.

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