FINE GAEL finance spokesman Michael Noonan has declared that Brian Cowen was “asleep on the job” when he was in charge at the Department of Finance.

Speaking on the This Week show on RTÉ Radio 1, Noonan said Cowen had been given ample warning of the impending banking crisis when he was finance minister, but had failed to act decisively.

He said the government’s excuse was that the banking crisis “was bounced on them and they had to act within hours and did the best with the information they had” wasn’t true.

Noonan pointed to reports that Merrill Lynch had advised the government against the blanket bank guarantee, and to newspaper reports that even current finance minister Brian Lenihan acknowledged the department had lost influence.

He added that the Department of Finance had previously advocated legal mechanisms to allow banks be put into examinership, and that a senior department official had expressed concern over ‘black holes’ appearing in Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide.

Commenting that none of the ample warning had been pursued, he concluded that Cowen must simply have been “asleep in the job”.