No conference on financial matters would be complete without a long-winded statement, ahem, question from Peter Mathews, the Independent TD for Dublin South and self-proclaimed expert on all things banking.

At the Tasc annual conference in Croke Park yesterday, Mathews was given the floor to ask a question of celebrity French economist Thomas Piketty and the Central Bank of Ireland Governor Patrick Honohan, who hasn't quite achieved celebrity status.

After more than than two minutes on his feet, Mathews posited the view that it was time we heard from the executives who led the banking sector to the point of collapse in late 2008. That’s the heavily-edited version.

Piketty looked somewhat relieved that Governor Honohan took up the baton on Mathews’s rambling question, which had elicited heckles from other audience members irked by him hogging their precious Q&A time with their hero.

Would it tell us much that we don't already know, given the reports we've had to date and the revelations from various court cases involving former executives of Anglo Irish Bank and Seán Quinn and his business dealings? Probably not said the governor but it would serve another useful purpose. "Humans like to see other humans and try and understand people's motivations," said Honohan in his usual plain-speaking style. "For the banking inquiry that is the gap that hopefully will be filled in the coming months when people will have an opportunity to see the human dimension of the people who took the decisions and why they took those decisions."

Hear! hear! to that.