Two damning reports into the Irish banking crisis have been published.

Drawn up by Central Bank Governor Patrick Honohan and by international banking experts Max Watson and Klaus Regling, the documents are highly critical of both the Dáil Government's budget during the boom and the regulatory authorities.

A Department of Finance spokesman said the reports were first discussed at the Cabinet meeting before being published late yesterday afternoon.

Afterwards, Brian Cowen said he deeply regretted economic policy decisions he made ahead of the Irish banking crisis and the Tánaiste Mary Coughlan has since said that a motion of confidence in Brian Cowen as Taoiseach will be debated in the Dáil next Tuesday. This is on foot of a no confidence motion being tabled by Fine Gael in the Dáil.

Mr Cowen - who was Finance Minister during relevant years - admitted not enough action was taken to make banks less vulnerable to the property bubble.

His comments came on foot of the international experts saying that Ireland's banking meltdown was a result of "home-made" decisions rather than the global economic crisis.

The former International Monetary Fund officials investigating the lead-up to the Irish crash said the Government's Budgets during the boom years left the country vulnerable.

But the Taoiseach refused to shoulder all the blame and insisted many mistakes made were based on fundamentally flawed projections from the Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the OECD.

"I agree with the assessment in the reports that a more restrictive fiscal policy would have helped in slowing the economy," he said.

"Hindsight is always clear and obviously we would have taken such a course if we had known of the scale of the property collapse which was facing the country.

"I deeply regret that," he admitted.

(BMcC/GK)