Furious Dept Finance Mandarins may sue

[Outlander]

Finance officials ?furious? | Irish Examiner

Finance officials ‘furious’
by Caroline O’Doherty

FURIOUS Department of Finance officials are contemplating legal action over leaked Anglo Irish Bank documents that imply the department backed the bank’s use of staged multi-billion euro transfers to prop up its accounts before audits.

Sources described the suggestions as a disgrace and said officials who dealt with the bank on the department’s behalf were considering defamation proceedings, fearing their integrity had been brought into question.

The contents of the internal papers were published by the Sunday Tribune newspaper, which quoted from memos, phone conversation transcripts and audit documents recording discussions between the bank and representatives of both the Department of Finance and the Financial Regulator.

One document recalls a conversation last September when the bank’s then finance director Willie McAteer told the then financial regulator Patrick Neary that he would be "managing" the bank’s balance sheets. The document records Mr Neary’s response as "Fair play to you, Willie." Mr McAteer resigned and Mr Neary retired since the extent of the now nationalised bank’s problems came to light late last year.

They are FURIOUS and considering DEFAMATION proceedings. All I can say is good luck...

The article emphasises the dislocation between government officials and the real world, but also shows that the cloak of secrecy must go.

Why does government business need to be done in secret? Why can television cameras not attend cabinet sessions - what is the problem?

[lostexpectation]

are they going to sue themselves or the gov

[Victor Meldrew]

There may be something in this. I've been given the impression from mid rank finance that the dept spends a lot of it's time keeping the FF morons from killing the golden goose . Clearly they lost the battle a long time ago. For the most part the civil service has some really smart, honest people in it's ranks. The damage limitation failed though. We are back to incompetent regulators for the root cause... But the mandarins have no chance.

[Christine Murray]

to pick the op up on his final sentence, there really is no such thing as transparency in our politics , they are media-craven and spin-led. a webcam or other recording device at cabinet would heighten the current already absurd level of personality politics and media sycophancy.

[toxic avenger]

The leaks were clearly for a purpose, and clearly the purpose was to spread the blame away from Anglo to others. I suspect that no action will be taken at all (unless they know who leaked), but if it has been a smear job to cover the arses of Anglo directors then I do hope they don't let the matter simply drop...

[Christine Murray]

Checks and Balances that would be effective : reduce the 30 year rule to ten and decrease FOI costings.

[BodyofEvidence]

This is a load of tosh
nobody was named - and they wont now put their head up and say "I told them it was ok to do this". Typical finance hubristic nonsense. Clearly they are rrattled - good, rattle em more. These dolts get paid vast sums to do their jb and have abjectly failed.

[Digout]

For anybody who was every worked in the civil service, you will be able to confirm one thing. Civil servants never do anything without orders from above. There is a chain of command.

[yehbut_nobut]

For anybody who was every worked in the civil service, you will be able to confirm one thing. Civil servants never do anything without orders from above. There is a chain of command.

Exactly. The civil servant's input would have been to present various courses of action, with the likely projected consequences for each one. They are not the decision makers, and every decision taken will be signed and countersigned to prove it.

[BodyofEvidence]

Exactly Digout. They dont think, they act. Reflexivly