The Labour Party is to table a Private Members Motion in the Dáil calling for a 'comprehensive parliamentary inquiry' into the banking crisis.
Party leader Eamon Gilmore said the party would also next week publish a Bill designed to address what he called 'defects' in current legislation governing the powers of the Dáil and Seanad to conduct inquiries into important issues.
Deputy Gilmore said changes to the law were needed to enable the Oireachtas to set up a Dirt-style inquiry into the circumstances leading to the banking crisis. He said this was due to a 2002 Supreme Court decision in the Abbeylara case.
'Decisions made by the banking sector, particularly in regard to the financing of property deals have created an economic crisis of unprecedented seriousness and have placed a financial millstone around the necks of successive generations of Irish taxpayers,' he said.
'People are entitled why the system in place failed so spectacularly,' Mr Gilmore added. He said the Taoiseach and other senior Fianna Fáil ministers were now the only ones trying to block a banking inquiry.
