No extra funds sought for Anglo Irish Bank inquiry

THE OFFICE of the Director of Corporate Enforcement has not made a request to its parent body for additional resources to deal with the inquiry into Anglo Irish Bank, the Oireachtas Committee of Public Accounts was told yesterday.

The office’s investigation, assisted by the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation, began almost three years ago after millions of files were seized from the bank in February 2009.

Last May Mr Justice Peter Kelly sitting in the High Court expressed serious concern about delays in completing the investigation. Was it, he asked, “ever going to come to an end?”

Yesterday chairman of the public accounts committee John McGuinness asked if there had ever been a request from the director of corporate enforcement Paul Appleby for more resources to speed up the investigation.

However, he was told by the secretary general of the Department of Jobs and Enterprise John Murphy that he had not been asked for more resources.