The latest revelations of escalating losses at Anglo Irish Bank follows the by now familiar pattern of drip-feeding bad news about Fianna Fail’s disaster bank.

The state-owned bank yesterday announced record losses of 17.6bn which will not only be the greatest corporate loss in Irish history, but proportionally one of the biggest bank losses in the world ever.
It hammers home once again the monumental cost arising from the disastrous decision of Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, the Greens and Sinn Fein to vote in the blanket bank guarantee back in September 2008.

The bank guarantee was introduced on the argument that Anglo Irish Bank was of systemic importance to Ireland, when in fact it was a niche developers’ bank.

The statement by Lenihan-appointed public interest Anglo chairman, and former Fine Gael leader, Alan Dukes, that there maybe further capital requirements amounting to €15bn for the Irish banking system, is deeply worrying.

Mr. Dukes appears to suggest that this requirement is to come on top of the tens of billions already set out in resp ect of the Irish banking system in the IMF-EU deal. Mr. Dukes’ assertions require immediate clarification, not only by the Minister for Finance, but by the Central Bank Governor and the Financial Regulator.

The Irish taxpayer is not capable of shouldering an additional burden of 15bn over and above . The Labour Party has already said that the burden of the EU-IMF deal is too great for Irish taxpayers, and that is why the deal has to be renegotiated. If there was to be further requirements, as suggested by Mr. Dukes, they would have to be dealt within a revised Eurozone framework.

Last night, Michael Martin, Fianna Fail leader, strongly defended the EU-IMF deal against Eamon Gilmore’s demands for a renegotiation, but within hours of his speaking, both his Minister of Finance and the Fianna Fail appointed chairman of the worst bank in the world has said that there are even more frightening losses to come.

I would trust and hope that Fianna Fail is not playing some kind of electoral politics on these grave issues. What are we to make of today’s announcement by Minister Lenihan that he is postponing the next round of capital injections until after polling day?

Fine Gael’s pre-election crocodile tears for Irish taxpayers are a bit rich considering they voted to give bondholders a ‘free lunch’ through the blanket bank guarantee. This decision directly resulted in senior Anglo bonds totaling €14.6bn being paid back in full during the two year existence of the blanket guarantee.

While FG’s tough talk on banks in the run-up to the election aligns them more closely with Labour’s long-standing position, it shouldn’t be forgotten that their Finance Spokesperson, Michael Noonan, was quoted on Bloomberg as recently as last October as saying that it was not worth risking the reputation of the country by negotiating with senior Anglo bondholders.