Finance union, the IBOA, said it supports a call from economist Colm McCarthy for an inquiry into what went wrong with the Irish banking system.
Mr McCarthy, who chaired the group that identified over €5.3 billion in cuts in the public services, recently called for a inquiry modelled on the 1999 public accounts committee investigation into Deposit Interest Retention Tax (Dirt) evasion by banks into the crisis in the Irish banking sector.
Larry Broderick, IBOA general secretary, said while the general public deserves “a thorough explanation”, thousands of ordinary bank employees also wanted to know about the failures in leadership that had placed their jobs in jeopardy.
However, Mr Broderick cautioned against using such an inquiry to allocate blame.
“The banking crisis has resulted from a widespread systemic failure involving not just the financial institutions, themselves, but also the public agencies charged with their supervision and regulation,” he said.
He said a more useful approach would be to indentify wider lessons required to prevent a reoccurrence of the failings that have lead to the current crisis in Irish banks.
Mr Broderick said the banking culture in many of the larger institutions remains unchanged “despite the unprecedented convulsions that have rocked the industry”.
An inquiry that did not seek to apportion blame was also more likely to uncover reasons why the system of banking regulation failed, he said.