ON MONDAY July 28 2008 Sean Fitzpatrick played 18 holes of golf with Brian Cowen on Druid’s Heath at the foot of Wicklow mountains. Afterwards they had dinner at the resort’s hotel.
When asked what he and Brian Cowen talked about Fitzpatrick says: “The world, Ireland, the economy.” He’s quick to add that they did not talk about “Anglo Irish Bank or anything like that.”
Given the crisis at Anglo Irish was under way at this point – its share price having been under attack since St Patrick’s Day – and that Cowen had been made aware of the problem caused by Sean Quinn’s acquisition of a large stake in the bank and subsequent need to offload a huge number of shares all at once, it seems incredible that Cowen did not once ask how things were going at Anglo.
Like the captain of the Titanic, he let the ship keep going in the same direction until the Irish banking system was ripped apart by the icebergs of September. Two months later the bank guarantee was introduced and ever since Irish capitalism has been reliant on the charity of the European Central Bank.
One thing Cowen and Fitzpatrick had in common, as they golfed their way around the greens, was a dangerous tendency to be taken in by their own propaganda. Both swallowed whole the free market fundamentalism, which was born with Thatcher and Reagan and died the day Lehmans went bust, and appear never to have considered the possibility of a 1929 style crash.
Fitzpatrick admits to having been blindsided by the anger waiting for him when he returned from South Africa after taking a holiday there following his resignation as chair of Anglo: “[A named colleague] had rung me. He said…If I were you I wouldn’t come home to this f***ing kip…I said, Don’t be ridiculous. He said, I am serious, it’s terrible. I just didn’t believe him.”
The Fitzpatrick Tapes – The rise and fall of one man, one bank and one country by Tom Lyons and Brian Carey (Penguin Ireland ) shows Fitzpatrick is too charming by half and, whatever he did in life, was perhaps destined to lead some group of gullibles over a cliff.
Given the closeness of Cowen’s relationship with Fitzpatrick, the final accusation our soon to be former taoiseach must face is that of cronyism: that Anglo Irish Bank was a Fianna Fáil bank and that is why he was determined to save it whatever the expense.
Yes, Cowen appears to have believed that the sun shone out of ‘Seanie’ and it’s clear now that it did not, but this story reeks of cock up rather than conspiracy. Similarly, the idea that Fianna Fáil is the sole practitioner of political cronyism does not stand up to examination.
When Des Geraghty was appointed to the board of the Financial Regulator last year, having only recently resigned from the board of our other national disaster, FÁS, no one from Labour, of which Geraghty is a member, had a word to say about this rather odd appointment.
Joe Higgins recently came out in support of former Scottish Socialist leader, Tommy Sheridan, jailed last week for perjuring himself during a libel action he took against The News of The World, which had published a story about Sheridan attending orgies at a ‘swingers club’.
For once The News of The World was telling the truth. Joe’s statement talked about Sheridan having been “singled out” because he was “a consistent fighter against the neo liberal policies”. Indeed.
Even if Fianna Fáil loses every single seat in the upcoming election, political cronyism will remain alive and well in Ireland. The evidence is all around you, on any part of the political spectrum you care to examine.
