November 11, 2011

Central Bank of Ireland investigation into ‘unfounded’ European Bank Authority stress test claims

THE Central Bank has received allegations from one of its own officials that Irish bank stress test data it processed was ‘doctored’ before being passed on to Europe.

The official claims the Central Bank did this to ensure Irish banks passed European Banking Authority stress tests in July.

The allegation, which the Central Bank has dismissed as unfounded, has been the subject of a secret internal investigation.

The investigation was launched about two months ago after the claim was made by the official, who had worked on stress test data prior to it being sent to the EBA.

The official claimed to have worked on data that was then deliberately ‘dressed-up’ to ensure AIB, Bank of Ireland and Irish Life & Permanent passed.

The whistleblower has also claimed to have repeatedly flagged problems with the data that was submitted to the EBA – which has yet to receive details of the Central Bank’s internal investigation.

A Central Bank spokesman said last night: ‘In response to an employee’s complaint expressing a concern over the way in which the EBA stress testing procedure was applied in Ireland, Central Bank management commissioned an investigation.

‘This investigation was conducted by the Bank’s Internal Audit Department under the Bank’s “Speak-Up” policy.

‘Based on the report of this investigation, which has been accepted by the employee, Central Bank management is satisfied that, while the complaint was made in good faith, there is no reason for concern with the figures provided to the EBA.’

Oireachtas Finance Committee member Stephen Donnelly said last night: ‘I would like the Finance Minister to come back into the Dail with sufficient information about these allegations so Dail members can see whether further information is warranted.

‘Then perhaps the Financial Committee could look into these allegations on behalf of the Dail.

‘In particular, it could see whether or not inappropriate pressure was applied and to see what impact this might have had on the final EBA stress test results.’

The Wicklow Independent TD added: ‘It is not appropriate for the Central Bank to be the only body investigating serious allegations against it by one of its own employees and especially on such a serious issue as the bank stress tests.’

A spokesman for the European Banking Authority said last night: ‘We are not aware of this at the moment.

‘We have not been informed by the Central Bank.

‘If the Central Bank of Ireland has information like this, we are waiting for them to inform us.

Economist Constantin Gurdgiev last night called for an independent investigation into the allegations.

‘The fact that allegations of this nature have been made is a very serious and worrying development,’ he said.

‘With all due respect to the Central Bank, they should not be the only organisation investigating these allegations.

‘It is fair enough for them to deal with them internally as a matter of course, but there needs to be an independent examination of the allegations.

‘If anybody at the Central Bank had any kind of pressure put on them to deliver a certain set of results then that puts the entire banking process into question.’

Of the 91 banks assessed, the EBA awarded stress test pass marks to all but eight of Europe’s major lenders.

Those who passed were deemed capable of sustaining theoretical drops in stocks, bonds and property prices during a two-year recession.

As far as Irish banks were concerned, AIB, Bank of Ireland and Irish Life & Permanent all passed.

Had any one of them failed, they would have had just two months to come up with a plan to deal with their short-comings.

They could have also ended up having to return cap-in-hand to the government for more bail-out money.

News that there has even been an investigation – not to mention allegations – related to Central Bank stress-testing data comes at a worrying time for banking across Europe.

Just last month, analysts at US firm Goldman Sachs warned that more than half of Europe’s biggest lenders are likely to fail the EU banking watchdog’s latest health checks.

The Wall Street giant has warned that the region’s weak banks could be facing a shortfall of as much as £260bn if the EBA forces lenders to raise their capital buffers to 9pc of their total loan book.

Under pressure from critics, the EBA is re-working its widely derided examination of the EU’s banking system that was conducted in July.

But so far, at least one of the European banks that passed -  Dexia – has run into trouble.

It had to be rescued a few months later by the German and French governments.

Indeed, the whole issue of stress-testing has already been undermined in Ireland because AIB ended up needing a bail out despite passing stress-testing in 2010.

Despite the EPA’s decision to publish 3,000 points of data about each bank in its last round of stress tests, there has been a feeling that there was little real clarity about dangerous banking exposures that may still be lurking in the system.

In Ireland’s case, this could well relate to bad residential mortgage debt.

As the Irish Daily Mail revealed last year, AIB staff – according to a staff whistleblower – alone account for around €3billion of the bank’s debts.

That figure emerged before AIB announced its intention to shed more than 2,000 staff.

There has also been criticism that the July 2011 stress tests did not take into account the chances of a Eurozone company collapsing and defaulting on its debt.

With Greek teetering on the brink of financial oblivion and Italy now becoming more of an issue, these scenarios look ever more plausible.

At the time, ratings agency Standard & Poor’s had suggested the tests could have been much more severe.

And Francis Fitzherbert-Brockholes, a banking and capital markets partner at law firm White and Case, added: ‘Although the tests are apparently more robust now, they still do not assume a sovereign debt default, only a sovereign debt downgrade.’

Have you got a whistle to blow about Irish banking? Call 087 919 9113 or email contact @ irishwhistleblower.com.

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November 11, 2011

AIB bow to ECB interest rate cut pressure

AIB has bowed to political pressure over its decision not to pass on the European Central Bank’s 0.25 per cent rate cut.

Last night, the bank issued a brief statement announcing it would pass on the rate cut to its mortgage holders.

But Bank of Ireland refused to say if it would follow suit.

Just after 7.30pm, an AIB spokesman stated: ‘Following the meeting between AIB, members of the Government and the Economic Management Council, the board of AIB has decided to implement a 0.25% interest rate cut to its variable rate mortgages.’

The decision comes a day after the bank’s bosses were hauled in for a meeting with Enda Kenny and Michael Noonan to explain why the rate cut had not been passed on.

Bank of Ireland and Ulster Bank bosses were also summoned to the meeting of Wednesday’s Economic Management Council meeting.

But when the bank bosses emerged on Wednesday, they infuriated the Government by saying they would not be cutting their interest rates.

It was a major humiliation for the Taoiseach and Finance Minister. It led to calls yesterday for the boards and public interest directors of AIB and Bank of Ireland to be sacked.

But AIB’s move is said to follow a lengthy phone conversation between AIB officials and Kenny earlier in the day.

Eamon Gilmore was pilloried and branded ‘pathetic’ in the Dáil yesterday for taking a soft stance with the lenders, which have been propped-up with billions in taxpayers’ cash.

The Tánaiste insisted he had been ‘very clear’ with the banks when they were summoned before the Government’s Economic Management Council on Wednesday.

AIB’s decision to pass on the rate cut is likely to bring an end to the demands for sackings.

The focus will now shift to Bank of Ireland, which was still offering no commitment to cut its mortgage rates.

When asked last night if it was going to follow AIB’s move, a spokesman told the Irish Daily Mail: ‘All the bank’s rates of interest are under review.’

Of the Government’s Economic Management Council meeting, Mr Gilmore said: ‘The representatives of the three banks who attended the meeting yesterday told us it was not their intention to pass on the reduction to their borrowers.

‘We made the Government’s view very clear to them, namely, that the interest rate reduction made by the ECB should be passed on.

‘People with mortgages need the reduction.’ Fianna Fáil deputy leader Éamon Ó Cuív described the refusal to pass on the reduction to domestic and business borrowers as ‘absolutely scandalous’.

He asked: ‘Will emergency legislation be introduced in the House next week to give the Financial Regulator the power to force the banks to pass on the ECB interest rate reduction?

‘Will the Government replace forthwith all public interest directors who are now not acting in the public interest?

‘Will it seek an immediate emergency general meeting of the guaranteed banks to remove the remaining directors?’

‘It is time the Government walked the walk rather than just talked the talk.’ Sinn Féin TD Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin noted that Junior Minister Brian Hayes had described the response of bank executives as ‘pathetic’.

The Monaghan TD said the word would be better applied to the failure of the Government to take on the banks.

He said: ‘In response to their polite request that the banks pass on the recent interest rate reduction, they were told, no.

‘The Government will have to take the decision to stand up and confront the banks to protect the interests of ordinary mortgage holders.’

While brushing off calls to lower rates earlier this week, AIB’s executive chairman David Hodgkinson said: ‘We have cut rates in EBS [now a subsidiary of AIB], but we are the lowest in the market and we will remain that way.

‘Because we didn’t increase our rates, we’re not going to decrease them.’ Customers affected are those with standard variable rate mortgages. With tracker mortgages, any changes in the ECB rate must automatically be passed on to the customer.

However, with standard variable rate mortgages, the banks have discretion.

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October 31, 2011

Qantas boss Alan Joyce fighting more than ‘foreign filth’ slurs

HIS NAME is in the frame as the man behind one of the most audacious union confrontations in airline history.

And while only time will tell if Alan Joyce has the mettle to weather out the storm, it’s not the first time the Qantas boss has had to face tough challenges.

Just a few months ago, he successfully fought a battle against prostate cancer.

And as he steered through a string of cost-cutting measures in the build-up to the shut-down, he has had to employ extra body-guards after receiving a string of death threats.

Among the letters he has received is one which referred to him as ‘foreign filth’ – a common racist slant that has dogged him since he emigrated to Australia in 1996.

U2 and Enya fan Joyce – who admits to reading books on maths for ‘relaxation’ – was born and raised in a Tallaght tenement block.

His mother worked as a cleaner while his father was a tobacco factory worker.

The oldest of four brothers, he was regarded as a maths prodigy.

So impressed was a Dublin secondary school teacher with his mathematical prowess that she would call his headmaster into class while the gifted 12-year-old proved theorems on the class room blackboard.

‘That really reinforced my interest,’ he recently told the Sydney Morning Herald.

‘At an early stage, she showed me the power of the mentor and I have been lucky enough all the way through my career to have that.’

He eventually went onto to study at Trinity College where he graduated with honours maths and physics.

Joyce joined Aer Lingus where he worked for eight years Alan spent eight years. He held a variety of positions in sales, marketing, IT, revenue management and fleet planning.

Then, in 1996, he left to join the ill-fated Ansett Airlines, where he would impressed the company’s CEO Rod Eddington enough for him to recommend him to his next employer Qantas CEO Geoff Dixon who took him on in 2000 and eventually appointed him head of Qantas’ no-frills airline, Jetstar in 2003.

He took the fledgling Jetstar business from just 14 aircraft to a nationwide domestic network business that also expanded out to destinations in Asia and Hawaii.

In November 2008, he took over from Qantas Dixon, who airline insiders say had treated Joyce ‘like a son’ and had even been heard to refer to him as ‘my little Irishman’.

Beforehand, he had won a string of awards – winning the Centre for Asia Pacific’s (CAPA) Low Cost Carrier CEO of the Year award and Airline Business Magazine’s Low Cost Leadership award while in 2007, he won the Australian Airports Association award for Personality of the Year.

Since taking the Qantas helm, Joyce has also had to field extraordinary comments about his roots from one leading senator calling him an ‘Irish bomb maker’.

The slur came earlier this year when Joyce attended a senate estimates hearing into pilot training in Canberra.

During the session, Joyce was asked by a Senator Bill Heffernan if he came ‘from a long line of Irish bomb makers’.

And he then went on to ask him directly: ‘Mr Joyce if the power was yours, you know from being an old Irish bomb maker, if you had the choice what would be the ideal pilot training?’

The exchange was the latest in a string of instances Joyce had had to put up with during his tenure at Qantas in Australia.

Last November, for example, he was mocked by a columnist in The Australian newspaper over his thick Dublin accent.

At the time, he had been asked to explain an incident in which one of his aircraft had suffered an engine malfunction while in flight and which had led him to ground his entire fleet of Airbus A380s.

He was quoted as saying: ‘Tiz too arly ter judge waaat dat issue is an’ ‘oy long it ‘I’ll take ter be fixed… It cud be ahn issue wi’ de casin’ or it cud be an issue wi’ de turbo-ines,’.

Despite Qantas’ push for more and more cost-cutting measures, the board recently agreed an astonishing 71% pay rise for its embattled chief.

This took his pay to more than AUS $5million, much to the annoyance of the unions whose members stand to suffer most from his attempts to slash costs.

His prostate cancer was discovered early this year – as a direct result of a health initiative he started at Qantas.

It had followed the departure of a senior executive who everyone had thought had been suffering from stress only for a thyroid problem to being diagnosed.

So he launched a programme of health checks for all senior staff and was the first to volunteer and early stage aggressive prostate cancer was discovered.

He told the Sydney Morning Herald last month: ‘I was very lucky. I caught it early.

‘They said if I waited till I was 50, which is the recommended age for a test, there was probably an 80 per cent chance I would have been dead.’

Ends

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October 19, 2011

Unions halt €9million Bord Na Mona cuts drive.

SUCESSFUL challenges by unions to cost-cutting measures at Bord Na Mona look set to cost the 95%-owned energy supplier more than €9million.

Company car perks and back-dated pay rises for staff are to be reinstated despite moves by management to scrap them.

Worth up to €13,000-a-year, the car perks had been removed from nine members of staff who then took the matter to the Labour Court, where they won their right to a company car back.

The bid to cut the €2.1million-a-year perk for 165 staff members was part of a raft of cost-saving measures by the body, which is 95% State-owned.

Another measure was a pay-freeze, but this was also successfully over-turned at the Labour Court.

Last night, Bod Na Mona said it was ‘reviewing’ the court’s decision on cars, which established that they  were part of staff contracts’ terms and conditions.

Michael Parker, from Insight Communications, also said on behalf of the company that it was still considering the Labour Court’s decision about pay rises in May.

Union UNITE had argued that the energy supplier had picked the nine workers from an initial pool of 34 but did not give any reasons for its decision.

After the decision, spokesman Dermot Mahon said the company was expected to restore the car perk before beginning discussions on a new policy.

He added: ‘It may want to change its policy, but it is not reasonable to just whip them away.’

During a hearing last month into the case, Bord Na Mona had argued that it was ‘facing significant challenges at the moment and needs to put cost-saving measures in place.’

As a result of that decision last May about the pay rises, more than 1,000 staff are now due a 3.5 per cent rise, which dates back to 2009.

The total pay-out could total more than €7.4million if it is applied to this year’s pay packets as well as the previous two years.
Bord Na Mona had declared the previously-agreed pay rises for 2009 as ‘inappropriate and undesirable, given the economic climate’.

But the Court found there was ‘no justifiable reason’ why staff ‘should have been treated less favourably than those in comparable State Enterprises and none was advanced by the company.’

Both Labour Court decisions are a massive blow to the company, and follow on from a series of successful challenges against management-led cuts.

In 2010, for example, the company’s decision to slash bonus payments was the centre of yet another Labour Court challenge by a union.

SIPTU represented two Bord employees who sued over reductions to their usual 10% performance bonus payments, which had previous been determined by team performance and the achievement of personal targets agreed with line managers.
However, in 2007/2008, management decided to make ‘company performance ‘the main criterion upon which bonuses would be decided.

SIPTU argued in court that the changes – amounting to a 1.8% reduction – to bonus payments had not been agreed with workers, nor had they even been informed that the changes were in place.

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October 18, 2011

Michael Flatley healer treated ex-TD before he died

FORMER Fianna Fáil TD Michael Fitzpatrick was being treated by dancer Michael Flatley’s healer in the months before he died.

He passed away last week after a battle against Motor Neuron Disease, which he was diagnosed with in March last year.

Although he had undergone a drug treatment programme organised by specialists, including Ryan Tubridy’s brother, consultant neurologist Professor Niall Tubridy, he had also been treated by Michael O’Doherty.

He is the ‘energy healer’ Flatley turned to cure a mystery illness that led him to cancel a tour in 2006.

O’Doherty, who runs Plexus Health-Care System in Ennis, Co. Clare, works by rebalancing ‘life energy’ and says that ‘if people believe, have hope and expect they can get better, then they can’.

Just months before former Kildare North TD Mr Fitzpatrick died from Motor Neuron Disease – for which there is no cure – he spoke to the Irish Daily Mail about his treatment with O’Doherty.

‘Michael is a great help to me and I feel a lot better.  It’s not a cure but I do feel better in myself,’ he said.

Last night, a family friend added: ‘Michael seemed to do Michael a lot of good.’

After Mr Fitzpatrick spoke about his alternative therapy, O’Doherty called for an overhaul of the way patients are treated in Ireland.

However, the call for a more ‘integrated’ approach to patient care came amid some concern  about O’Doherty, who ‘treats’ people with ‘every conceivable problem from back pain to depression, to cancer, asthma and arthritis’.

The disquiet has increased since the death in March last year of Limerick woman, Hilary O’Carroll, who said she had been cured of cancer by O’Doherty.

In 2009 she talked of how she was free of the ovarian cancer she was diagnosed with the previous year.

In a video on O’Doherty’s website, for the launch of his Just Imagine book, she says: ‘In December 2008 I was given between 12 and 18 months to live.

‘When I had the final CT scan in July of this year, seven months to the day of having being diagnosed and the CT scan said there was absolutely no trace whatsoever of cancer.’

Sadly, five months later, she died in Limerick’s Milford hospice.

Professor Senator John Crown last night said: ‘It’s the usual unsubstantiated turgid waffle that relies on testimonials, which mean little or nothing.’

He is infuriated by O’Doherty’s advice on breast checks. O’Doherty said women shouldn’t look for lumps, saying: ‘If you genuinely believe that you have something and fear that something, then you will create it.’

But Professor Crown said: ‘People who tell women that they should not examine their breasts for cancerous lumps, is doing a horrific disservice to women.

‘The evidence is very clear that early diagnosis improves the prospects for cure.’

Bio-energy healing involves therapists moving their hands over a person’s body to re-balance their ‘life force energy within and around the human body’.

When the energy becomes imbalanced, says O’Doherty on his website, it results in disease and sickness.

But he says he ‘scans the energy field’ before conducting a ‘re-balancing’ exercise which entails using ‘a series of specially developed protocols to treat the patient’.

O’Doherty and Plexus HealthCare co-founder Tom Griffin claim to have helped ‘thousands of people all over the world’, some of whom have signed up to be taught how to work as a bio-energy healer, at training sessions which can cost more than €500-a-head.

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October 14, 2011

Michael Lynn in Poland bomb blast probe

DISGRACED developer and former solicitor Michael Lynn is feared to have been the target of a gangland bomb attack.

The fugitive was in a house in Krakow, Poland, when the blast went off. A car, that Polish police think was his, was found at the property shortly after the attack but there was no sign of the 44-year-old from Co. Mayo.

Documents detailing various property deals by his failed firm Kendar Properties were found in the vehicle.

Lynn is believed to have been visiting the house when the bomb went off. It was only after the car was searched that a link to Lynn, who left Ireland more than four years ago owing around €80million, was established.

Police initially thought he might return to the scene and reclaim the car, which has since been moved to a police car pound.

But he has not been in contact with detectives investigating the 2009 incident. They now suspect he might have actually been the target of the bomb – which may have been set off at the property in Krakow as a result of a botched business deal. Detectives do not regard him as a suspect. Instead, he is being described as a witness.

A court hearing in connection with the blast is due to be held over the coming months and authorities have been looking for an address for the developer so a summons can be served on him.

A legal source said last night: ‘We need to find Mr Lynn and speak to him about this incident and to ask him about the car that was found.

He is not being treated as a suspect. Instead, he is being considered as a witness and we have wanted to speak to him since it happened. ‘However, we do not know how to get in touch with him.’

The extraordinary twist is the latest turn of events for Lynn, who is believed to have unwittingly become associated with Eastern European gangsters during his business dealings in Bulgaria.

A file on him has been passed to the Director of Public Prosecutions with a view to issuing a European Arrest Warrant for him. He has repeatedly failed to attend meetings set up by Garda fraud squad detectives.

They now want him arrested and brought back to Ireland for questioning. The Law Society has already ordered him to pay €2million in fines.

Lynn, who was struck off as a solicitor in 2008, was also found guilty of 57 changes of misconduct by a disciplinary hearing.

In January the following year, the Irish Mail on Sunday tracked him down to a secluded villa in Portugal.

In his only interview since absconding from Ireland in December 2007, Lynn denied he was a fraudster or a fugitive. He spoke on the condition that his exact location was not revealed.

In his only interview since absconding from Ireland in December 2007, Lynn he said that he was working to pay back all his debts and he insisted that he did not retain any ownership stake in any of his developments.

The 44-year-old from Co. Mayo denied that he was a fraudster or a fugitive and insisted his only crime was getting caught up in the trappings of the Celtic Tiger, like so many others during the boom.

Lynn told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘Today I look in the mirror and ask myself who he was? I am disappointed that I lost some of my own fundamental principles that I was given as a young fellow.

‘I have let my family down and I have let myself down. And that’s difficult and I need to live with that all of the time. But that’s my problem, that’s my bed and I have made it.’

The missing solicitor has been accused of taking out multiple mortgages on the same properties and has estimated liabilities of some €80million.

His assets were valued at around €52.5million and he or his firms were listed as having a staggering 154 bank accounts and dealings concerning 148 properties.

Lynn is known to have visited the UK, Portugal, Bulgaria and the United States and his extensive portfolio of assets includes properties in those countries.

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October 13, 2011

NAMA hotels get Global Irish Economic Forum 2011 delegates ‘block-booking’

IT WAS established in 2009 as a way of helping figure out how Ireland could get through the economic downturn.

Deemed so successful, many of the same delegates who attended the first one joined attendees for this year’s Global Irish Economic Forum.

But last night, it emerged that most of them stayed in hotels run by NAMA – the agency set up to deal with the very individuals who helped cause the economic mess in the first place.

Taxpayers had been left with the impression that the high-flying members of the diaspora attending the forum at Dublin Castle were paying for their own flights and accommodation.

However, the hotel bill for delegates is likely to amount to just over €30,000 – all chargeable to the taxpayer.

Traditional hotels in the Ballsbridge area struggling to beat the recession were ignored when the Government block-booked the rooms for its guests.

The forum was established in 2009 as a way of helping figure out how Ireland could get through the economic downturn.

That initial 2009 meeting was considered a big success. Last weekend’s meeting was the second gathering and was attended by many who had been there in 2009.

Organisers of the event at the Department of Foreign Affairs said that the Burlington Hotel, which developer Mr McNamara bought for €288million at the height of the boom, and the Berkeley Court, which Mr Dunne paid €375million for, were both used as the only official hotels for this year’s forum. They were chosen for ‘price, locality and availability’.

More than 300 delegates attended this year’s forum, but last night the Department of Foreign Affairs insisted that ‘more than half’ the delegates had paid for their own accommodation.

They could not provide a list of who stayed where, however.

One of those who did avail of the free hospitality, however, was comedian Dara Ó Briain – who was so impressed that he tweeted about it – describing his hotel as ‘one of Nama’s finest’.

Although €30,000 may seem small change to the likes of Mr Dunne and Mr McNamara, the sum would have been a huge lifeline to other, non-Nama hotels in Ballsbridge.

They include Landsdowne Road’s Ariel House, winners of the 2012 Georgina Campbell Guest House of the Year award.

General manager of the 37-room hotel Deirdre McDonald said last night: ‘We would have been delighted to have had the chance to quote for a block booking to do with the forum.

‘But we were never approached, despite the fact that we regularly take corporate bookings for the Aviva Stadium, the RDS and even the Convention Centre in Dublin’s city centre.’

A spokesman for the Herbert Park Hotel – also situated in Ballsbridge – confirmed that ‘as far as we were aware, no approach had been made’.

The 153-room hotel is also regularly used by organisers of events held at venues such as the RDS and Aviva Stadium.

The Herbert Park spokesman added: ‘If we had been approached, we would have offered a competitive rate.’

Neither of the two hotels are in Nama, which administers loans taken out by Mr Dunne and Mr McNamara that are secured against both the Burlington Hotel and the Berkeley Court.

Paul Gallagher, president of the Irish Hotels Federation and general manager of Dublin’s Buswells Hotel, said last night: ‘It’s very important in this economic climate that there should be a level playing field when it comes to choosing hotel accommodation for events like last week’s forum.

‘I don’t think it is right that other hotels are not getting the same treatment, and there should be a more open policy by the Government when it comes to large events that require block bookings.

‘The use of two Nama hotels in these circumstances further undermines and weakens viable hotels in favour of non-viable hotels.

‘Viable businesses are struggling to pay their way and not relying on being propped up by the taxpayer, either directly or otherwise.’

He said the federation would be taking the matter up with Tourism Minister Leo Varadkar.

The rates offered by both the Nama hotels used as accommodation for delegates are believed to have been between €70 and €100 per head.

Over two nights, the estimated amount of business put the two D4 hotels’ way was at least €60,000. Not all of this will be paid by the taxpayer, as in the region of half the delegates paid their own way.

Also, not all the delegates or speakers will have stayed at either the Berkeley Court or Burlington Hotels over the two nights that accommodation was arranged for them. But those who stayed could avail of a series of coaches laid on to take them to and from Dublin Castle, where most of the forum-related events were held.

Of the 330 delegates who attended, speakers included Taoiseach Enda Kenny, ex-president Bill Clinton, the European Commission’s Secretary General Catherine Day and Goldman Sachs International chairman Peter Sutherland.

Celebrity guests included Bono, author Colm Toibin, and actor Gabriel Byrne. Dara Ó Briain tweeted about his accommodation shortly after attending the forum.

He said: ‘I was not paid to attend. We stayed in one of Nama’s finest for free, but I paid my own way over.’

When asked on Twitter by one of his followers about the cost of food laid on for delegates, he replied: ‘No idea. It was delicious, though.

‘And the Nama hotel I stayed in was a sight too. Crashed a debs on the second night.’

Minister for European Affairs Lucinda Creighton is to raise the matter with her Government colleagues, according to sources close to the Dublin South East TD. The two Nama hotels are situated in her constituency.

She was unavailable for comment last night, but a source said ‘she was unaware about and uninvolved in the planning and running of the forum’.

The source added: ‘Other hotels should be supported and she is likely to raise the matter with her colleagues.’

The headline ‘act’ at the forum was undoubtedly former U.S. President Bill Clinton. But although his speech on the final day had top billing, the forum wasn’t the only reason why he was in Dublin last week.

When asked about the arrangements made for his participation in the two-day event, the Department of Foreign Affairs said that he had come to the capital for a variety of reasons.

They were unaware of any fees paid by the Government in relation to the forum to either him or any corporate entity in which he has any material interest.

While most delegates stayed at the two Ballsbridge-based Nama hotels, the department confirmed that he stayed at the more upmarket Shelbourne Hotel on St Stephen’s Green – but could not elaborate on what else he was up to in Ireland.

But it has emerged that he spent time in the company of fellow forum speaker Bono.

The U2 singer hosted an event at his house on Saturday night and Sunday. It is not known if Mr Clinton attended on the Saturday but he was at the singer’s Killiney home on Sunday.

His security men were seen in and around the house, and Bono was spotted hugging film director Neil Jordan at his front gate about 5.30pm.

Bono and Bill are expected to meet again this Saturday, with the singer reportedly among a number of stars due to appear at The Clinton Foundation’s tenth birthday celebration in the Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles.

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