The Minister for Justice and the Garda Commissioner said they were both aware of the public concern and outrage over financial irregularities at Anglo Irish Bank but insisted this was a major complex criminal investigation.
Fachtna Murphy said the gardaí were working closely with the Director of Public Prosecutions and that they had met the Director of Corporate Enforcement twice this week.
Two senior counsel had also been retained to review the evidence as it was being gathered, and next month a mutual assistance hearing was being held in London to extradite further evidence from the UK for use in Ireland.
The Garda Commissioner also said that complaints in relation to Anglo Irish Bank had been made to the gardaí from February 2009 to August of this year.
400 statements had been taken so far, some as long as 150 pages, suspects had been interviewed - some with their lawyers beside them - these were continuing and arrests had been made.
The commissioner said he expected some decisions on the case by the end of the year.
Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern said there were 40 investigators involved and politicians had to be very careful about what they said as prosecutions had been damaged in the past.
In relation to Fine Gael's Leo Varadkar's statement that the tax or traffic laws should be used against the bankers, Mr Ahern said there might be some satisfaction from stopping someone with no tax on their car but he did not believe that was what the public wanted.
