Running for cover. That was banking poster boy Seanie Fitzpatrick when confronted by a reporter about his role in the collapse of our financial system.

Former Anglo Irish Bank chief Fitzpatrick scurried into an underground car park rather than offer any apology for the billions of taxpayers’ money now being pumped into the banking system.

At the same time, RTE’s Prime Time Investigates also revealed that the other major rogue banker, Michael ‘Fingers’ Fingleton, gave EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy a €1.6m loan.

A former employee of Irish Nationwide said Fingleton approved the loan – without seeking any significant collateral or paper trail.

Mr McCreevy was unavailable for comment and was said to be out of the country until January.

Viewers last night saw Seanie FitzPatrick running for cover when challenged to explain why banks were in bed with senior politicians and developers.

The former head of Anglo Irish Bank ran from an RTE Primetime Investigates reporter.

“Do you not think that I have a right to any type of privacy,” the disgraced banker pleaded, before he reluctantly accepted: “Of course we regret it.” Today Labour Justice spokesman Pat Rabbitte called for an inquiry to get to the bottom of “this shocking story, which effects every member of society”.

Mr Rabbitte said that Anglo was allowed to operate through “blind eye regulation” which “infected the banks”.

It also emerged that a golden circle of politicians and developers were routinely allowed to bypass banking rules to get multi-million euro loans.

The RTE programme alleged that some of the country's most senior politicians were not only aware of the lax controls that caused the banking crisis, but that they were actually taking full advantage of the system.

Michael Fingleton's former “right-hand woman” has claimed that he ran the Irish Nationwide as though he owned it.

Olivia Greene said: “My feeling was that once you moved within the right circles, he dealt with you as if Irish Nationwide was a personal bank.”

Among her astonishing claims is that ex-Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy was loaned €1.6m for a €1.5m property – at a time when the building society didn't provide 100pc loans.

Guidelines

“Under our guidelines we didn't advance 100pc mortgages. Homeloans for the purchase of a family home was between 90- 92pc and investment properties was 70-80pc,” she revealed.

The revelation came on the same night that Taoiseach Brian Cowen refused to set up an inquiry into the banking crisis. Mr Cowen said that he did not want to “commit to a course of action before talking it out”.

The new Governor of the Central Bank Patrick Honohan pinpoints 2003 as the start of “boom time banking”.

Separately a former lender at Anglo, working in London, said that bank bosses were focused only on making profits.

The banker, identified only as Peter, said: “There was a huge focus on breaking the billion euro profit. If you started looking after €40 or €50m worth of loans and you end up with €600 or €700m loans, you are heavily incentivised to continue that growth.

“You started cutting corners. There were 10 or 20 clients who could virtually ring up and get full approval over the phone.”

Primetime Investigates reporter Oonagh Smyth confronted ex-Anglo boss Sean Fitzpatrick about these allegations but he refused to do an interview.

“I spoke to you already on the phone, okay? When you asked me I said no, I wasn't going to do an interview with you,” he said.