'Nobody knew' extent of banking crisis, says Cowen

Former taoiseach Brian Cowen, in an Irish language interview with RTE's Fóram programme, has denied that his government knew the full extent of the hole in Anglo Irish Bank's finances at the time they introduced the bank guarantee in September 2008.

''Nobody knew! And the full truth about that was not clear until the following January," he said.

"So, there were three months where we were in with the new people who had taken it over, and it was then that we saw how much worse it was than anyone had thought - not just in that bank but in all of the banks."

This was at the peak of a global financial crisis that came about because of vast shortages of liquidity across the world's banking system. Banks feared that they would run out of the cash that enabled them to operate from day to day.

Mr Cowen said: ''There was no certainty that the banks would have enough money to pay their workers, not just at the end of that week but in the weeks that followed. We wouldn't have had a banking system at all. And you can't have a functioning modern economy without a banking system."

The Troika, made up of the IMF, The European Commission and The European Central Bank, came into the country in November 2010.

And, on behalf of the country as taoiseach, Mr Cowen signed up to the Bailout Programme.

But, he rejects any suggestion that Ireland's sovereignty was affected by those events.

Mr Cowen said: ''It's true that a programme was agreed with the Troika and there were various conditions applied to our finances.

"And decisions had to be made by the Government each week at our meetings to keep to those conditions.

"Yes, we did have to report to them from time to time but it's very important to say that the Troika were not running the Government on a daily basis during that time.

"Every time that we had to make a decision - even if the public eventually showed at the next election that they did not agree with us - we did what was best for the country.''

The 2011 General Election saw Fianna Fáil slide to third place in Irish politics and lose more than two-thirds of its TDs, a record decline at a Dáil election.

Mr Cowen resigned and stepped away from politics. He described being at a low ebb for some time after that big change in his life.

''After I stepped down from the job, I was very disappointed with the result of the election.

"And maybe I felt that I was responsible, that it was my fault. And after I'd left that job, not just the job of taoiseach, but political life in general, it seemed like everything just stopped.

"For about six months afterwards that disappointment didn't lift and it was hard to get on with life," he said.

When asked how he would hope to be remembered by people in the future, he said: ''When you see what happened in other countries, such as Greece, where they had a different approach to the various European authorities involved, people will be able to see that the most important objective for us was always the good of the country."

Fóram can be seen every Sunday morning at 10:30 on RTÉ One Television and on the RTÉ Player.

Watch the full interview in today's episode of Fóram