Taoiseach Brain Cowen at the helm - - both a pilot, Pilate and pastmaster in passing the buck.

We have often made the point that Ireland is a place of limited or no accountability where the buck appears to stop nowhere. On Tuesday, we had announcements on reports to be made as part of an Irish banking inquiry and a High Court Inspector's report on the DCC insider trading case was also published. There is a connection between the two.  As for the banking inquiry, there will no doubt be a big cast of Pontius Pilates.

In July 2007, the Supreme Court had ruled that DCC's founder and executive chairman, Jim Flavin, had market sensitive information in his position in 2000, when he sold DCC's stake in fruit importer Fyffes. Mr. Justice Nial Fennelly  said: "To trade on the use of inside information is recognised for what it is. It is a fraud on the market."

IAIM only responded because of the public criticism of a prominent company, treating the Supreme Court with contempt.

Insider trading is as old as the joint stock company and while it's often hard to prove, it would not generally be viewed as a crime by insiders.

In the United States, the billionaire founder of the Galleon Hedge Fund, Raj Rajaratnam, faces the prospect of up to 25 years in jail if found guilty, in a case, following an ongoing investigation.   

It used to be said in Ireland, it's not what you know but who you know.

In 1940, Deputy James Dillon said in the Dáil in reference to the three year sentence to an industrial school, that was given to a child who had stolen some grapes: "Can you imagine the son or the daughter of a resident of Fitzwilliam Square being brought down to Morgan Place and sent from there to an industrial school because he stole 5/- (32 euro cent) worth of grapes?"

How times have changed!  Or maybe not.

DCC's board included the former chief executive of Ireland's biggest banks, Maurice Keane of Bank of Ireland and Michael Buckley of AIB.

IAIM, which includes bank-owned asset managers, had only made a public intervention on Irish banking after the crash, when there appeared to have been the prospect of an external investment in Bank of Ireland, in early 2009. 

Reckless lending, dependent on a huge jump in foreign borrowings and the selling of assets including bank headquarters to overstretched developers, in the crazy year of 2006, didn't seem to matter.

Going with the flow, was paying dividends.

Taoiseach Brain Cowen rubbished the idea of an inquiry into the banking crash until recent days. He has agreed to one, not because he has any interest in finding out what went wrong, accepting responsibility or airing dirty linen, but in response to  pressure, led by the new governor of the Central Bank, Patrick Honohan.

The chief witness in an inquiry into the Irish banking crash should of course be the Minister for Finance at the time when the hysteria was allowed to build to a breaking point --  Brian Cowen.

Cowen even changed Building Society legislation in 2006 to facilitate Irish Nationwide chief executive's desire to have an unencumbered trade sale.

At the time, the building society was a smaller version of the builders bank Anglo Irish with most of its lending for commercial property.

Cowen also gave in to lobbying on a tax change for the betting instruments, contracts for difference (CFD).

Billionaire Seán Quinn lost over €1bn on CFDs on Anglo Irish Bank shares.

The sign "The Buck Stops Here" was on President Harry Truman's desk in the White House Oval Office (1945-1953). On the reverse side, i.e. the side that Truman saw, it was inscribed, "I'm from Missouri". That's a short form of "I'm from Missouri. Show me". Natives of that state (a.k.a. the Show Me State), which included Truman, were known for their skeptical nature.  As President Truman said, "The President – whoever he is – has to decide. He can’t pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him. That’s his job." The saying "the buck stops here" derives from the slang expression "pass the buck" which means passing the responsibility on to someone else. The latter expression is said to have originated with the game of poker, in which a marker or counter, frequently in frontier days a knife with a buckhorn handle, was used to indicate the person whose turn it was to deal. If the player did not wish to deal he could pass the responsibility by passing the "buck," as the counter came to be called, to the next player.

Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan told the Dáil on Tuesday that two preliminary inquiries will be completed by the end of May, with a commission of inquiry under an expert chairman established by June 30th and asked to report by the end of the year.

One report will be produced by the governor of the Central Bank on the performance of the functions of the Central Bank and the Financial Regulator. The second report would be from“an independent ‘wise’ man or woman with relevant expertise to conduct a preliminary investigation into the recent crisis in our banking system and to inform the future management and regulation of the sector.”