Irish must arrest and prosecute the corrupt bankers and others

Justice must be seen to be done over financial crisis

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Tim Pat Coogan

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Ministers are making encouraging noises about the Irish economy and the government has ended the infamous bank guarantee which landed the Irish tax payers with a bill of 64 billion euro to shore up the country’s ‘casino’ banking system.

But the state of the economy is so powerless that the Croke Park agreement between employers and employees in both the private and public sectors is being re-negotiated to the detriment of the unions and the public are looking down the twin barrels of a property tax in the summer and another scarifying budget in the winter.

Cuts and levies have bitten so deeply that lower paid Civil Servants who have had their pay cut have had to be granted Family Income Supplement from the same exchequer.

It is economics Irish style. But what they are not getting is an explanation as to how all these imposts became necessary or any indication that the government is treating both the weak and the strong with fairness and equity.

Kathleen Ní Houlihan needs a perp's walk. If the Government didn’t share my views on the need to make people accountable for what was done to our people and our economy under Fianna Fáil, I’d say the opinion poll results which came out recently went far to changing their minds.  There have been some mutterings from the government benches about the need to hold enquiries by way of Dáil committees but nothing conclusive has emerged.

Enda Kenny’s humanity displayed in his reaction to the Magdalene Women report may alter the position but the fact remains that the poll showed Fianna Fáil overhauling Fine Gael! This is the party which gave us an epidemic of suicide because of their marriage made in hell with corrupt financiers, builders, bankers and civil servants.  When I say party I mean its leadership of course and those who went along to get along not the ordinary Fianna Fáil supporter who comes from the same stock as Fine Gael and shares the same hopes and aspirations.

The poll does not reflect any appreciation of the efforts of Enda Kenny and some of his team to act with decency and dispatch to clear up the foul mess which Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen left behind them, but it does reflect the dangers and the depth of the grave which the Fine Gael led coalition with Labour are digging for themselves.  There’s an eerie sense of history repeating itself.

Fine Gael is the lineal descendent of Cumann na nGael which established the Irish Free state,thereby creating the democratic sovereignty which Fianna Fáil have handed over to the IMF and the money lenders of Brussels.

Cumann na nGael successfully fought a civil war and managed to repair the destruction of that war and of the Black and Tan war, out of an Exchequer bereft of British subventions and suffering from the effects of horrific emigration and unemployment. The party also established an unarmed police force, a corruption free Civil service and through the most Draconian cuts and economies somehow managed to balance the books and avoid the ever pressing danger of having the British treasury pulling the rug from under the Irish pound.

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