MINISTER FOR Tourism Mary Hanafin last night said that the Taoiseach’s statement on his contacts with the former Anglo Irish Bank chairman Seán FitzPatrick was clear and she accepted what Mr Cowen had said.
However, she said the issue “adds to the instability of the party” coming into an election but a change of leadership “would not help”.
She was speaking following the Fianna Fáil Dún Laoghaire selection convention in Killiney.
Asked about Mr Cowen’s meeting with Mr Fitzpatrick, Ms Hanafin said that nothing was said to the Cabinet which influenced its decision on the bank guarantee.
Before Mr Cowen issued his statement, the Opposition said there were “serious contradictions” between his explanation of a phone call with Mr FitzPatrick in 2008 and his account to the Dáil of how he became aware of the crisis at the bank.
Fine Gael called on the Taoiseach to explain what it said was the discrepancy.
Party spokesman on public expenditure Brian Hayes said the Taoiseach had confirmed that Mr Fitzpatrick had phoned him on March 17th, 2008, to tell him about difficulties surrounding shareholdings held by Seán Quinn in the bank.
Mr Hayes said that in the Dáil on February 17th last year Mr Cowen had said he had become aware – he was minister for finance at the time – of the issue from official sources in the Department of Finance, Central Bank and Financial Regulator’s office that “a large overhang of shares were held by the Quinn Group and related persons in the family”.
Mr Cowen also informed the Dáil, said Mr Hayes, that “a meeting had taken place last March at which the governor indicated to me that a situation was developing in regard to the contracts for difference issue in Anglo Irish Bank”.
Mr Hayes asked why the Taoiseach did not tell the Dáil that he had discussed this matter with Mr FitzPatrick.
“The fact that he chose not to reveal this information suggests to me that he knew it would be regarded in a very serious light.
“And it also raises serious doubts about other accounts given by the Taoiseach over Anglo Irish Bank and the banking crisis in general,” he said.
Labour deputy leader Joan Burton said there was a serious contradiction between what the Taoiseach was now saying and what he previously told the Dáil.
“In both responses Mr Cowen implied that he had learned of the Anglo-Quinn problem from official sources. At no time did he disclose to the Dáil that his first indication of this problem came in a call to his mobile phone from . . . Seán FitzPatrick,” she said. “At best the Taoiseach was being economical with the truth. At worst he deliberately misled the Dáil,” she added.
Another Fine Gael frontbench member, Leo Varadkar, said the relationship between Mr FitzPatrick and the Taoiseach was “a little bit closer than previously thought”.
He said the Green Party should demand that Mr Cowen clarify the nature of his contact with Mr FitzPatrick.
Pearse Doherty, Sinn Féin’s finance spokesman, said the Taoiseach needed to come clean over the full extent of his knowledge in the run-up to the banking guarantee.
