Brian Lenihan protests over Liveline host urging callers to withdraw their money
BRIAN LENIHAN, the finance minister, telephoned the RTE director-general last week after a series of alarmist telephone calls to the popular Liveline show raised fears of a run on Irish banks.
Up to a dozen callers to the RTE Radio 1 programme urged listeners to withdraw their money from banks, while just a handful appealed for calm.
Lenihan rang Cathal Goan, the station chief, to express his “concern about uninformed comment” on the credit crunch “and its possible effects”.
**The concern over Liveline was prompted by the fact that, according to Lenihan, “there had been a significant shift of consumer deposits” among various banks around the country last week.Asked if there were “signs of a run on the banks” last week, Lenihan said that there was “rapid movement of deposits” between institutions but the pattern was not consistent in different regional centres. **Duffy yesterday refused to comment on suggestions that last week’s programmes had been unbalanced. The former student-union leader, who was jailed for two weeks in 1984 after a student occupation of health-board offices, attracts an average of 368,000 listeners each day.
Defending Liveline yesterday, an RTE spokesman said the show is based on calls from members of the public. Last week, 11 callers were put on air who advocated the withdrawal of money. Only three callers urged calm.
Michael, a post office worker, said there was a huge surge in people opening accounts in his branch. An Post savings accounts are guaranteed by the government.
Another caller, Jimmy, said withdrawing his money from the bank was not an “irrational decision”.
timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w … 795354.ece
2Pack
September 21, 2008, 12:36am
2
SBP has this too
sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/story … qqqx=1.asp
I see the government did not leak a story to the media about how the Financial Regulator Neary was missing in action until Liveline gave him what we Galwegians call a “Root In The Hole!” and* how Neary in FinReg and Hurley in the Central Bank were missing in action most of the week.* . Hurley to this very day.
Was the source of the “rumour” about Santander in take over talks of BOI nailed down yet and if not, why not ?
2Pack
September 21, 2008, 12:54am
4
Bit convenient that one Gatelodge . Santander were gentlemen because they never denied it
More p1ss and W1nd from Jody Corcoran. He’s as good a journalist as Lenihan is a Finance Minister.
daltonr
September 21, 2008, 9:26am
6
Government spends it’s enerfy blaming everyone else, and only does what it should have done all along when shamed into it.
Business as usual then.
Nobody seems to care that despite RTE highlighting the ridiculously low level of cover, there was no run on a bank.
Brian Lenihan should be ashamed of himself that he’s questioning the eduction of people in this regard. Is it any wonder RTE has never had a good Watchdog style consumer interests show on tv or radio.
-Rd
2Pack:
SBP has this too
sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/story … qqqx=1.asp
I see the government did not leak a story to the media about how the Financial Regulator Neary was missing in action until Liveline gave him what we Galwegians call a “Root In The Hole!” and* how Neary in FinReg and Hurley in the Central Bank were missing in action most of the week.* . Hurley to this very day.
2Pack, haven’t you noticed before, Hurley has been MIA for the last 10 years !
I dispute that Hurley is MIA. What action would that be? More like AWOL.
Quite right Bungaloid, you get shot if you go AWOL in combat.
geckko
September 22, 2008, 12:45pm
10
I must have missed the calls for an enquiry into these recent events:
Short selling banned
Rumours of takeover being spread in the market.
Those evil Long-buyers could be trying to manipulate the market,
The takeover rumours were deliberately timed to coincide with Lenihan’s 100k announcement.
Yet here we are Monday morning and the dust has settled: arguably, we’re in a worse situation.
