Banking on Lehmans to bail out the bluFFers!

The standard FF defence for presiding over the shambles that has been Ireland’s banks in the last 2 years has been “Lehmans and Bear Sterns were a shock to the system”. Expect to hear a lot more of this when the Irish banking inquiry gets going. The commission will be chaired by the Governor of the Central Bank who’s been a loan voice within that organisation calling for accountability and an international “wise man”. They cannot look at anything that happened since September 30th which means that NAMA, events in Anglo Irish Bank, Irish Nationwide and the role of the regulator who told us that the Irish banks are the best capitalised in the world in the events of late 2008 are beyond the scope of the inquiry. The relationship between the Finance Department and the banks as well as the regulator and the banks will be examined too. It’ll be mostly in secret and those giving evidence will be spared the embarrassment of the media and public discussion of their evidence. The first stage will be all over by May (we’ll see about that!). These reports will be laid before the Oireachtas and will be the basis of a commission to inquire further and will wrap up by years end. Irish bankers doubtlessly still deeply grateful to the government will be treated with kid gloves by the Greens & Fianna Fail in comparison to their counterparts elsewhere. Current government policy is off limits, of course.


I’m totally underwhelmed and I don’t think that the inquiry will restore confidence in the banking system. I believe there should have been a wider scope along the lines Eamon Gilmore argued. Firstly clarify the extent of the Supreme Court judgement into the Abbeylara Case and see if the intention was to end all Oireachtas inquiries or just those that may lead to a negative finding affecting an individual. If the matter is clarified satisfactorily change the law to allow Oireachtas inquiries again. The Abbeylara Inquiry determined in the context of an Oireachtas Committee into the events surrounding the killing of a man by the gardaí.
Too much has been relied on in this judgement on which to base an opinion surrounding all inquiries. What is interesting is that the Abbeylara judgement precluded adverse findings of fact and conclusions in relation to a named person not a member of the Oireachtas. So why can an Oireachtas inquiry not ask members of the Oireachtas about their role in the collapse? Brian Cowen and Bertie Ahern are not protected by the Supreme Court judgement. Both have played key roles in determining the relationship between the FF, the banks and developers. Surely these 2 could throw a little light in their part in the slump? Add in Mary Harney.

So the best that the Greens can get out of FF is the “tried and trusted” mechanism that served the government so well in Ferns, Murphy, and the Ryan Reports. My recollection of these reports were that some chapters were withheld from publication, and that culprits hid behind letters, while senior management in the garda bent the rules while those on the ground tried their best. But unlike Murphy, Archbishop Martin didn’t inquire into the behaviour of paedophile priests in Dublin diocese, he co-operated as head of the diocese. The Greens spent weeks promising acocuntability and fell way short again. What's new?
However the Governor of the bank is now charged with investigating his own banks behaviour. This is setting the man up for a fall! I believe that Prof Holohan is genuine in his intention to get to the bottom of the scandal but he will be hampered because many of those who preside over the light touch regulation at the bank are still there. He’s in an invidious position. I forecast that co-operation will be less than whole hearted and the momentum of the inquiry will run into turbulence. Add to this the pedestrian pace of the year long garda inquiry into Anglo and the need to protect the identity of those responsible being released so I reckon that all we’ll find out is that Banker A was put in charge by an internal interview process that was overseen by Bankers B & C. A along with Banker D ignored the loans approval committee which was chaired by B and provided monies for Banker E who is related to C to buy shares in Company F which was part owned by individual G through Contracts For difference that was arranged by Banker H.


The greens and FF have provided those with an interst in obstructing an inquiry with a golden opportunity to do just that. In the end will confidence in the banking system be restored by this inquiry? Will Brian Cowen and Bertie Ahern have to account for what they did, explain the cancerous growth of FF, Bankers and Builders, well to quote the late Jim Gogarty when he asked for a receipt from Ray Bourke, “Will we f---?”

Provisional Liquidator Appointed

One of the real unsung heros of northern politics Republican Labour MP Gerry Fitt entered a bookie shop in West Belfast 40 years ago this week. He made a phone call that changed Irish politics irrevocably. He spoke with Jim Callaghan in Downing Street and asked him to send British soldiers into protect nationalists in Belfast who had been the victim of a retaliatory pogrom in response to the Battle of the Bogside. Callaghan said to Fitt it was no problem but replied 'Gerry, I can get the army in but its going to be a devil of a job to get it out'
Nobody who was present in 1969 could have forecast how the troubles would have developed. The Taoiseach Jack Lynch made his famous “won’t stand by” speech. As a child I remember the tension, especially as I had close family connections to the north. A few days after the Battle of the Bogside, my Dad brought us to Derry or Free Derry corner as it had become. Callaghan had come to speak to the people of the town. He walked briskly past us as he came down from Rossville St flats at Butchers Gate towards the two up two down houses that are now long gone. He spoke from an upstairs window to the crowd as the British army looked on from the walls above.


40 years on it’s timely to reflect on what transpired and perhaps how the north has missed the boat so many other times before and ended up with an executive which has less powers than the Scottish Parliament that was delivered without so much as a minor injury and an over populated political class. Much of the problem stems from the reality that northern politicians never had to take a decision for which they had to account to the electorate for. It was easy to say no. Northern unionists often looked down on the south as poor. But by contrasting the sunshine of Fermanagh and South Tyrone with the grey bleak rain of the Irish Free State they missed the reality that Irish ministers actually made decisions that had huge impact.
When you compared how farmers in the south milked the EEC in the 70’s with the poor subvention extended to their northern counterparts or how the south’s economy benefited from ongoing EU infrastructural investment for 25 years, the real impact of political decision making can be seen. Southern politicians had to account for decisions and blunders they’d made. Politics in the south has always been about being in power but politics in the north has been about being in opposition. While politics in this state was dominated by economic decisions and the impact of cabinet decisions on daily lives for most of the 40 years of the troubles, northern politics became stale. It did not attract trade unionists, business people or community activists that influence politics here. Many Sinn Fein MLA’s spent long periods in prison. The SDLP became identified with the civil rights generation. The UUP parroted for many years whatever Paisley thought and Paisley spent most of his dysfunctional life ruining the lives of others who had the misfortune to cross his path.
So I watch First Ministers Question time on BBC Parliament with great interest. I’m struck by the culture, half Daíl half Commons. SF members address the chair as Ceann Comhairle, ceisteanna trí gaelige, members use the acronym OFMDFM to shave seconds into their speaking time, Robinson speaks for McGuinness and vice versa, you couldn’t separate SF from the DUP on any issue. Robinson often turns to speak directly to his own side when answering their questions but looks at the chair when answering a SF question. Robinson and McGuinness sit opposite one another not together, the opposition Alliance sit in the middle! The Irish solution to the Irish problem is certainly better than the alternative.
And yet at the back of it all you ask yourself have some of the key players fundamentally changed? If crookery can co-exist in a slightly constitutional party in the south for decades can a complete personality transformation be performed over night up north? Somehow I get the feeling that civil servants are choreographing and writing speeches like there’s no tomorrow up north. DUP ministers like Nelson McCausland or Sammy Wilson are to put it mildly rough around the edges. They see themselves as manning the gap as the apprentice boys did over 300 years ago. They cannot be allowed to fail and the luxury of having a world view isn’t needed. No Surrender has re-morphed into “the terms of the GFA”.

So long as Sinn Fein feel they’re making progress recent events have shown they’ll stick to any agreement that they sign up to. But what happens after Adams? If a southern leader is elected as Uachtaran Sinn Fein and shows as lamentable knowledge about economics as Adams did in GE 2007, how will SF MLA’s react if they lose seats? Fitt delivered Sunningdale in the 70’s Hume delivered it again for the slow learners in the 90’s. And in the background there’s still from time to time “The Shadow of the Gunman” looking for the remedial version.

Ireland 2009, Reds still under the beds

Last week I was in my local newsagent. One particular headline grabbed my attention. The Catholic Voice asked was Labour anti-catholic. The newspaper has only recently started but the title is well known from religious publishing in other countries. A quick glance over the main story and I quickly saw that that august organ was setting out its concerns at Ruairi Quinn’s view that the non-denominational patron Educate Together should be permitted to become patron of more schools. As someone who is a member of another patron Co Wexford VEC, I don’t know why a catholic newspaper has no problem with my secular patron body but is concerned enough by Educate Together to use it as a stick to beat the Labour Party with.
Thankfully not everyone in the Irish catholic church doesn’t share the concerns of the “Catholic Voice”. Dr Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin seems to be of the view that its not in the interest of the catholic church to hold on to patronage of schools where many parents do not subscribe to catholic values. On the face of it I don’t see a huge amount of difference between the effect of what Dr Martin proposes and the reality that Ruairi Quinn points out that new schools need to be built in expanding communities and these have to have a patron and if a Christian church is not available then who plays that important role. It’s not as if potential patrons are knocking on the department’s door everyday! Ruairi has recently highlighted the penchant of Opus and Knights for departments with a social role that give them control over Irish society.

The article has more of a hint of a red scare about it. Appropriate that it targets Labour almost 40 years on from the 1969 General Election where the Irish right smeared Labour candidates. The then Agriculture Minister mohair clad Neil Blaney said” labour members ranged from pseudo-intellectual Marxists, Maoists, Trotskyites and the likes who have emerged from the sidelines to pick off the flesh of the Irish people”.
Local Government Minister Kevin Boland concerned at the gutting his cabinet colleague Charles Haughey was getting at the hands of Connor Cruise O’Brien said Labour wanted to seize peoples property, savings and land. Justice Minister Michael Ó Morain who subsequently quit a day before the arms crisis broke said “Brendan Corish was a mere puppet of the modern Marxist elite and of the new left wing political queers who have taken over the Labour Party from the steps of Trinity College and RTE”. Sean McEntee, ironically the Cruiser’s father in law said “Labour stood for the red flames of burning homesteads in Meath”. A Mayo candiate said Labour would permit abortion, divorce and it would be “great for the fellow who wanted a second wife every night”. A Sligo candidate said Labour would tear down every crucifix in the state.
Lynch distanced himself from all of this by canvassing every convent in the country, re-assuring rural and traditional Ireland that FF could be trusted with the important decisions. As a teenager I remember walking home from mass after the 1977 election rout in the company of my father and a FF supporting neighbour. The conversation quickly turned to politics, the delight of Lynch’s victory was only surpassed by the eclipse of Labour in particular the defeat of our local Labour TD Justin Keating who I was informed was a “card carrying communist.” In retrospect I suppose there was no point being a communist unless you had the card to prove it! Keating had been over whelmed in the media by rising prices. He was also singled out by FF supporting miners and prospectors over the Bula affair and his strict conditions on developing any hydrocarbon fines.
It worked then but it won’t work anymore. The population are better educated but also who remembers communism? Red scare is a waste of breathe and that’s a problem for our opposition. They cannot dismiss Labour nor our ideas. They cannot use the tactic to obstruct useful developments like schools nor accountability on matters such as industrial schools. So buy the Catholic Voice, any Labour member should take this type of attack as a compliment and a glimpse back to another age.

Groundhog budget day for FF & Greens.

Bill Murray would understand Brian Lenihan. Condemned to repeat his actions until he gets it right in the movie “Groundhog Day”, Brian Lenihan may well be looking for Bill’s number for advice ahead of the Holy Week budget. The 2009 Groundhog Day at Gobblers Knob coincided with the anooucement by Brian Cowen of readjustments designed to keep the public finances in track. My way!
It was the way that the supplementary budget was announced which gave away the game that Fianna Fail& the Greens had run out of ideas. When asked about the ever-declining revenue base by Eamon Gilmore, Brian Cowen said the matter would be addressed in a Finance Bill No 2. As the Finance Bill No 1 referring to the October budget has been passed, No 2 refers to the next budget i.e a supplementary budget. Previously the minister had said he’d wait for the commission on taxation to report on revenue generation before he’d bring in proposals on tax in Autumn. That line is no longer sustainable.
So here we go again; the Fianna Fail and Green grounhogs are having another go at getting things right. It’s easy to forget how many goes they’ve had at stabilising the economy so is there any real harm in giving them another one? Competent governments only need one go so let’s recap;

First Go; July 2008 cuts of €400M are announced and the government goes on holiday for 10 weeks! Second Chance; Early 2009 budget in October to let the people know whose in charge, no one told the cabinet however, Third time; Government announces in early December a strategy for focussing investment in infrastructure, Dail recess for 6 weeks and this doesn’t work so a fourth attempt on the return sees the Taoiseach announce a series of new measures including the pension levy for public servants in February. Now in March we’re told they’ll have a fifth go in April. But last week the Tainiste told us that the public finances were under control.
So now the government will sit around the cabinet table once more and try to come up with another way of solving the crisis. It’ll give them a chance to fly kites in the media once more, perhaps we’ll hear about cutting back Minister for State, social welfare for single mothers, child benefit, increasing tax rates and bringing those on low pay into the net while ignoring the money etc. Mind you Fianna Fail & the Greens have sat on these figures for months now, they gave the Labour Party access to the figures at breakfast time today and by bedtime they expect them to have the answers! So what the alternative? Lets assess the facts; The top 1% own 34% of the wealth of the country. The disposable income of the top 10% is 14 times greater than that of the bottom 10%. Well first if there is a national emergency where are our wealthy? Let’s get them back home from their tax havens and start them contributing. Close off the tax schemes that allow money to be stashed away in concrete. Freeze public service pay, freeze the numbers working in the public service, scrap the co-location programme, reduce the national development plan, end decentralisation after the present phase is over, personally I’d charge through the nose for cigarettes and alcohol and make rates payable to the local authority.
Like the groundhog this government seems afraid of a shadow. What will they do in Summer when they get the report from the commission on taxation? By then they’ll have taken the easy option. Perhaps Brian Lenihan may not ring Bill Murray but he should listen to someone because in the last budget he didn’t and look what happened!

Vaccine “row” that takes 3 months to start

Some months ago I posted here on my support for the cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil. Approximately 200 women die each year from the condition in the Republic of Ireland. This condition is in the news as the Reality TV personality Jade Goody is now in the terminal stages of this form of cancer. The vaccine if introduced would over a long period of time reduce incidence of the condition in Ireland. The occurence of cervical cancer is set to rise by 1.5% per year so when my daughters are in their middle age it may well have doubled. I was particularly disappointed that the Health minister Mary Harney had withdrawn her plans to vaccinate young girls as I knew it mean that while the likes of me could afford to buy the vaccine for my daughters at the appropriate age, others would not. In short I don’t believe a woman’s health should be subject to the family’s ability to pay. It is unusual to vaccinate against a cancer and that’s because in the case of cervical cancer about 66% of cases are caused by a virus HPV. So eventually you could expect about 130 lives to be saved by a policy of vaccination
Arising from my view I joined a facebook group. I subsequently received an email out of the blue from an opponent of the vaccine who claimed that the full truth of the vaccine was not being told. She went on to say I was playing Russian roulette with my child’s health. I disliked the attitude of the group so much that after the second email I received I replied asking them not to contact me again.

Roll forward 3 months and I got an email from the Sunday Tribune setting out the activists complaint that I’d been unfair to her. It seems the activist has approached the paper setting out a number of complaints against the facebook group as she was removed from it eventually. Cllr Ryan in Wexford is charged with asking her not to waste politician’s time. What has the world come to that I’m expected to indulge someone who peddles bad science simply because the unfortunate Jade Goody is in the news for the worst of reasons? Lets get this clear, The vaccine is licensed in the US by the FDA, here by the Irish Medicines Board and HSE. The noted oncologist Prof John Crown also backs the vaccine. Lets me direct on this, If I was diagnosed with a cancer, John Crown is the man I’d look for.

Anyhow today the Tribune says that there is a row and that reader's can conclude that Councillor Ryan is in the eye of the storm! Well in the immortal words of Mohammed Ali, Do I look bruised? I’ll get over it but the reality is that there are women for whom cervical cancer is neither a campaign against a vaccine nor a debate about science but a serious life threatening condition. Bruised? It's worse than that. These women are hurting and it’s a pain and fear I’ll not have to experience because I’m male and that my daughters can hopefully avoid. That’s a reality I’d like to see much less of.

O’Keeffe’s special needs cuts hit the vulnerable again

A cut is not a cut if it’s indefensible decision. It seems that this government have given cuts such a bad name that now they deny that they are cutting. All they do is merely allocate scarce resources in a more equitable way! Nonsense, this is not about improving a child’s life chances, it’s about accountancy. Such an indefensible cut is the decision announced by Education Minister to remove some special needs education assistance from primary pupils using as bogus cover advice that the pupils benefit more by being in an ordinary class, even one that will be more over crowded from next September. It reminds me of the excuse offered by Minister Hanafin to justify her removal of disability allowance from 17 & 18 year olds. She said it prevented their entry into the workforce and claimed she was acting on the recommendation of voluntary groups.
Batt O’Keeffe has asked people not to cloud the issue with emotion. I agree so let’s deal with facts not ministerial spin. He rubbished the suggestion of his decision as being a cut. The pupils concerned are described by the Minister’s term “mild”. The type of child the minister is thinking about can have slow speech and language development, poor memory, limited attention span, emotional disturbance and visual or auditory impairment. Minister O’Keeffe finds it hard to believe that the INTO could want a teacher for just 3 or 4 such children. What he clearly doesn’t understand is that a teacher has a choice in classroom, either ignore these children and teach the class in which case they make no progress or else spend as much time with these children as possible and as a consequence the work and development of the class slows down.
The department already allocates funds through the General Allocation Model for each school with pupils who need learning support. The suggestion of schools being all the same and all doing the same thing is wide of the mark. Schools cannot be all things to all people, schools are encouraged by the Minister to specialise and provide services in their community. Indeed some schools who wanted to provide for pupils with either learning difficulties or for those who are gifted, experienced their own difficulties and were refused by the department citing duplication as some schools already provided that service in the community, some ironically now on the list released on Friday for a reduction in staff. Many of the schools on the list are schools that would be well known for their focus on helping pupils with a learning disability. I particularly note St Senans NS in Enniscorthy. This school has a fine tradition of providing for pupils with learning difficulties. Schools like this don’t need the Minister’s folksy potted logic on possible learning outcomes in already overcrowded classes. They need the Minister’s support. In reality these schools could have avoided these cuts if they ignored the needs of their pupils in the first place. In short they’re being shafted because they achieved and the Minister doesn’t want to pay the price and he’s hiding behind a report, just as Minister Hanafin hid behind the voluntary groups.
If a school can fill a class with 11 such pupils then the funding will remain in place. In total there’s 128 classes nationally with number below 11 with over 800 pupils involved and 128 teachers facing dismissal. Minister O’Keeffe denies that this cut is due to budgetary reasons, a claim backed up by Minister Willie O’Dea on radio over the week-end. This claim is mere spin and an insult to the parents, teachers but most of the children involved. In fact the bar, set at 9 by the Department of Education, has now been raised by the Minister to 11.The schools that identified the need for teaching pupils in a targeted approach must retain these supports.
Minister O’Keeffe has not published the advice on which he claims he’s working on. Minster O’Keeffe should explain why it is that classes of less than 11 are not in the pupil’s interest while those of 11 or more remain of benefit and schools with such will keep their allocation. He should also explain what will happen at second level schools that similarly target resources for pupils with mild learning difficulties. Will he now move against learning support and Special Needs Assistants in these schools too?
This cut is indefensible, the Minister must reverse it.

A day when Dublin and Washington couldn’t be so different

Well it’s the day that Americans have looked forward to more than any other, Barak Obama assumes the presidency and with it a veil can be drawn on the last 8 years of political mediocrity that passed for leadership. Lets be honest, Bush was handed the 2000 election by the failure of the Democrats to win 2 states, Gore’s and Clinton’s. Losing your own turf is unforgivable and yes Bush stole Florida. The debacle about Florida would have been a non-issue if the top 2 Democrats had delivered.
George Bush’s presidency was stumbling into lethargy in 2001. He spent most of the summer on his ranch in Texas and media comment was rife about what his whereabouts and an administration on auto-pilot. It seemed that it looked like another one term Bush in the Whitehouse until that bright sunny September Manhattan morning in 2001. Bush’s behaviour on the day of 9/11 smacks of a rabbit caught in the headlights. Bin Laden rescued Bush’s presidency not once, but twice, on the eve of the 2004 election he issued a tape warning of attacks on the US. This swung waverers behind Bush to deliver another GOP win over a real war hero who’d been softened up by smear, John Kerry.
Tuesday is their chance to wipe the slate clean. How we’d love that chance in this country on the day we mark the 90th anniversary of the first Dail, another day in history when a people started out with optimism for the future. On a day when an Afro American assues the presidency because of a US president named Johnson, we in Ireland mark an event inpsired by his Liverpudlian namesake, Tom Johnson.
5 time zones east of DC things couldn’t be more depressing, one reason why Europeans are enthused by Obama is he gives us a rare commodity in this jurisdiction, namely hope. I don’t believe Obama is any more on the political left than Kerry or Gore, both of whom I believe would have run significantly different administrations to Bush. In politics timing is everything and Obama is the right man at the right time. His tendency to include everyone in his decision making sees Republicans, the Clintons and their allies all on board. If he lets people down then so do they! Smart politics, but I hope for everyone’s sake that he does deliver.

If he wants to see how it pans out when you dither he should ring up the other famous Offaly man Brian Cowen. Exactly a year ago his poll rating was above Bertie Ahern’s now the murmuring among FF supporters is bring Ahern back. It won’t happen. For the modern world’s first republic they may well reflect how far they can go, for us the anniversary of the first Dail may suggest how far we’ve gone indeed whether we’ve moved at all. When you reflect on the aspirations of the Democratic Programme inspired by Cathal O’Shannon and Tom Johnson towards a fairer and equal society one wonders whether their remains in the Mansion House any echoes from the Anglo Irish Bank EGM of last Friday or indeed Batt O’Keeffe will have a Pauline conversion when he reads It shall be the first duty of the government of the Republic to make provision for the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of the children, to secure that no child shall suffer hunger or cold from lack of food, clothing or shelter, but that all shall be provided with the means and facilities requisite for their proper education and training as Citizens of a Free and Gaelic Ireland. The conservatives in Sinn Fein undermined the Democratic Programme 90 years ago, make no mistake the conservatives in Irish society still undermine progress today. I understand as soon as the speeches are over the Back To School allowance is set for the chop at a prolonged cabinet meeting.
Same day 2 nations one looking up and forward another looking down and out!

The best little Warehouse at Xmas

I’ve moved to the view that the best way for the government to manage the banking system in the interest of the economy is to control it. That’s why I’m not surprised at another missed opportunity by this government. Ronán O’Gara could never be a FF supporter because he takes every opportunity going! This crowd of so called independents, Galway tenter’s and veggies have just blown a golden opportunity to shake off the past by putting in place a strategy to fundamentally change the banking industry. 3 months ago they rescued Irish banks that had blown every last shilling on toxic debt.
Essentially the economy was caught high and dry because what has passed for growth in the last 15 years was a building boom in houses and commercial development that was financed off over night borrowings at 2-3% to be paid back over 15 or whenever. If the developer needed more money sure go and get planning permission to build, increase the asset value and back you again for more from the bank.

Buying a house? Forget about saving, your friendly financial institution will give you a 100% mortgage, and a loan for furniture, car and appliances. You’ll need the car to drive 2 hours to work every day!
The reason why our economy has come off the rails so spectacularly is that they couldn’t control the exposure of institutions outside the state to toxic debt. The crisis in credit that resulted finished the Irish party that was already struggling under its own weight. I doubt that the €5.5B for the 3 banks promised tonight will be able to recapitalise the SME sector, but I’d like to be wrong
This government is effectively clueless and is now about to hand cash to one bank that has already hid lending to senior management from shareholders. When the Financial Services Regulator heard he did nothing about it for a year, the Minister never “officially” heard until 2 days before it was revealed in the media. The same bank is 15% owned by Sean Quinn one Ireland’s wealthiest men. Earlier this year Mr Quinn was penalised by the FSR for benefiting has from a secret loan to Quinn Insuarance so as to facilitate the take over of BUPA a move that merited it a €3M fine. 18 months ago Anglo’s share price was almost €18 now it’s less than 30c The Quinn shareholding in Anglo raises some disturbing questions. How was his purchase of shares in Anglo funded? If the money was borrowed did any of the money come from Anglo? How much do Sean Quinn and his companies owe Anglo? What security does Anglo hold over any money it has lent to Quinn? Quinn’s €1B investment in Anglo is now worth about €35M!
Sean Fitzpatrick effectively created Anglo Irish Bank out of the tiny City of Dublin Bank & Equity Banks about 20 years ago. This bank is the story of Celtic Tiger Ireland. Like our economy it came from nowhere to become temporarily a major player, Like our economy there is something not quite right about how it got into this mess. What makes Anglo Irish different is that it is not a retail bank but a commercial bank heavily exposed to borrowings from developers and builders. With the saturation of the retail sector and the decline in construction the bank has difficulty accessing capital to lend, its customers have a declining asset value with little hope of building it, little cash coming back off its loans and no future. Mr Fitzpatrick used a curious procedure of off balance sheet financial gymnastics to hide money he borrowed from his own bank as CEO. This practise is called Warehousing. It reminds me of Warehouse John, a nickname given by the late Veronica Guerrin to another small businessman who made good John Gilligan. The electorate who are going to inject €1B into Anglo Irish should be told why Warehouse Sean needed to borrow money, whether credit committees in Anglo or INBS knew and if so what did they do and if not why not? What would the significance of the bed and breakfasting of €87M have had on Anglo Irish had it been reported at the time?
A final thought which perhaps should be the first one, where are the garda? About 4 years ago when the Republican movement robbed the Northern Bank of £26M before Christmas a major investigation took place. So where is the fraud squad, Harcourt St Garda station is about 5 minutes walk from Anglo Irish HQ and perhaps the best thing is for the intervention by the garda. Joan Burton was right when she saID that an inspector should be appointed to investigate what went on before the bank gets as much as a cent