ANGLO IRISH Bank chairman Alan Dukes last night called for all current Irish Catholic bishops to resign.
At the annual Burren Law School in Ballyvaughan, Co Clare, Mr Dukes called for a Ryan-type inquiry to be carried out in every diocese.
In the opening address of the school, themed “Power – its Uses and Abuses”, Mr Dukes heavily criticised the Irish regulatory authorities that presided over the boom and subsequent bust, claiming they had abused the power given to them.
Mr Dukes said: “In both the financial sector and the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland and elsewhere, we have witnessed an abuse of power by those in direct contact with the public, and failure by the relevant regulatory or controlling authorities to take action to remedy the abuses. This failure in itself constituted an abuse of power.”
Mr Dukes said measures were now being taken in the financial sector to remedy past failures and that “analogous measures are needed in the Roman Catholic Church”.
He pointed out that in all the major banks, top level personnel have been replaced and that an inquiry into the origins and causes of the banking crisis is under way.
“We have in place a new governor of the Central Bank and a new Financial Regulator. A Central Bank reform Bill has been published and new legislation on banking governance is in preparation.”
Calling for similar measures in the Catholic Church, Mr Dukes said that along with all bishops resigning and a Ryan-type inquiry in each diocese, there should be transparent criteria for assessment of the suitability of candidates for bishop, and that a new set of diocesan governance practices should be drawn up.
Mr Dukes remarked that “bishops themselves seem to be even less ready to step down in the face of systematic failure than are chairmen of banks”.
Mr Dukes said the Vatican’s response to clerical sex abuse was to conceal abuse and abusers in order to maintain a facade, rather than ensure that those whom it appointed to take charge of dioceses carried out their duty of care in a proper manner.
In staunch criticism of the previous Irish regulatory regime, Mr Dukes said that the “regulatory authorities abused the power given to them by legislation by simply failing to use it in the face of clear failings on the part of market operators”.
Mr Dukes also stated that the financial sector abused its market power by imprudently fuelling a bubble.
However, Mr Dukes argued that the authorities had the required legislation that “contained all the powers that were needed to prevent our financial sector from having played the appallingly pro-cyclical role it played in the property and construction boom”.
Mr Dukes said the “imprudent concentration of risk in the lending activities of our major banks” did not suddenly happen in 2007 and 2008.
“It had been building up for years before that. The spread of the contagion from one institution to another also happened over an extended period. The previously uninfected were under no obligation to put themselves in the way of catching the disease.”
He said there had been warnings from the regulatory authorities, but added: “These tended, however, to be couched in rather diffident terms and were clearly not followed up by explicit prescriptions designed to cure the disease.
“When the bust became blindingly inevitable, the reaction of the regulatory authorities was to encourage the financial sector to don the green jersey and to show a degree of solidarity which, in other circumstances, might be considered anti-competitive.
“We witnessed something like the Stockholm Syndrome in regulatory behaviour.”
