Cowen urged to explain bank talks

Cowen urged to explain bank talks: "Taoiseach Brian Cowen has come under increasing pressure to explain previously private meetings with disgraced former Anglo-Irish Bank chairman Sean FitzPatrick.
Mr Cowen was facing calls to make a full statement on his relations with the banker and his knowledge of the banking crisis in the months before the Government signed off a taxpayer-backed guarantee scheme in September 2008.
The Taoiseach's coalition colleague and Green Party leader John Gormley is to demand explanations about the previously undisclosed meetings with Mr FitzPatrick. Mr Cowen and the bankrupt ex-Anglo boss played golf and had dinner at exclusive Druid's Glen Golf Club two months before the Government hurried through a crippling protection plan to save Anglo and other homegrown Irish banks from collapse."