Fears over whether the Oireachtas banking inquiry will publish a final report are symptomatic of a pattern of incompetence within political leadership, Social Democrats TD Stephen Donnelly has said.

Mr Donnelly, who stepped down from the inquiry in June last year after Taoiseach Enda Kenny added Fine Gael Senator Michael D’Arcy and Labour Senator Susan O’Keeffe to the committee, said the inquiry should have been set up in 2011.

“The real culprit here is the lack of political leadership. The inquiry was set up with a good chance that it would fail,” he said.

“It should have been set up in 2011, which would have given the team much more time and would have made it much more relevant.”

He said he believed the parliamentarians on the committee worked hard but that the inquiry failed to cover two important areas by starting in 2014.

Those were exposing the role of the European Central Bank and the role of irresponsible lending in the financial crisis, he said.

‘Secretive, non-accountable politics’

He said the inquiry failed to demonstrate the damage caused by “secretive, non-accountable politics”, adding that “Enda Kenny set it up as a vehicle of the Executive anyway and put his two people on it”.

He continued: “It’s very hard to see how the public are going to have much regard for the report if the members themselves have so little regard for the draft.”

Mr Donnelly said the issues surrounding the banking inquiry as well as the news that the inquiry into write-offs on Irish Bank Resolution Corporation asset sales could take several years raise “deeper questions about a pattern of incompetence”.

He added: “Ultimately what’s happening is the Irish people and parliament are not getting transparency in what’s going on.”