THIS WEEK, I would like to reflect on an article I wrote for Carloviana in 2000, and I never thought in my wildest dreams that I would be reflecting on it in 2011.
This article was titled Our Heritage and what it means to us. And had I not written it then, I would have as many, if not more, reasons to write it today.
Never in my 90 years have I been so dismayed by the performance of our government, our bankers, our developers, our regulators and civil servants in responsible positions, who now seem to think they are in charge and that they can screw us from any angle.
I include department secretaries, the DPP office, semi-state CEOs and judges, some of whom seem to be appointed because of their political allegiance.
Although I have written numerous articles about the brave and the good members of the Garda Síochana (the vast majority), I have as yet not dealt with the small percentage who ruin the reputation of the force and who are not fit to wear the uniform. They believe they can apply the law to their own standards and that the statute book serves no useful purpose.
They also believe that because they wear that uniform, they can inflict any violence and pain they wish on law-abiding people who happen to make a simple mistake.
Those people cannot defend themselves against thugs in uniform because, if they do, they are liable to face more serious charges.
Unfortunately, a small number of judges – especially in the lower courts – won’t believe anyone except the gardaí. As an inspector said to me recently: “We have to believe the guard.” Why?
If a guard injures a person without due reason, he or she is guilty of an offence.
If the garda is believed in court after telling a pack of lies (which does happens, I’m sure), and the defendant rebuts that information and proves the garda is lying, the defendant will still be convicted and can be charged with perjury, which is a very serious offence. But, in actual fact, the garda should be charged with the offence.
Recently, some guards have been brought to book for ill-treatment of Irish citizens, and it is about bloody time. Some have even been jailed, which is a miracle.
We will look at those and the disgraceful conduct of some judges in another article. Another group we have to look at are the barristers and solicitors.
Again, we have to say that some, not all, will bleed you dry and do little in your defence, and some have robbed people blind with impunity.
Of all the professions I have mentioned, with the exception of the few gardaí or former gardaí, not one member of any profession is paying for their crimes.
As a matter of fact, some of the developers are actually being paid by NAMA, yet they have misappropriated countless billions, even putting some of it in relatives’ names as a method of evasion.
If you don’t pay your TV licence, you will do time; if you can’t afford your mortgage, your property will eventually be taken from you; if you can’t afford to pay your electricity bill, you will be cut off; and if you can’t afford heating, you and your family face death from hypothermia.
But none of those who got us into this mess need worry about that.
The ordinary people who will suffer are paying through their nose to keep the chosen few in comfort.
As I wrote in the 2000 article, Irish people in penal times suffered unbelievable degradation due to laws that were enforced by a foreign power.
Now they are suffering again due to the lack of enforcement or the lack of will to enforce the law on those who ruined this country, so the poor and middle class pay the ultimate price.
And while we hear a load of manure about bond holders having to be paid in full, while all our services are been decimated through lack of money, NAMA is handing out millions to developers.
They claim this is not a developer bailout. If not, what the bloody hell is it?
They can’t be Scrooge if they are playing Santa Claus.
In that article, I wrote in times of darkness and hunger the bright spots were a wedding, a birth or birthday, sometime even a funeral.
I believe we are back to those days.
Many people are suicidal over debts they can’t afford; we have innocent children this Christmas who will not have Santa visiting or who will be receiving very little; we have old people with nothing to eat; we have pensioners who, as one stated to Marian Finucane when her programme requested ideas on how to save energy, that when she boiled her kettle to make tea for her breakfast, she would then fill her flask with the remaining water to make tea for the rest of the day.
Is cute Phil reading this? Let me repeat: a pensioner in Ireland in the year 2011 cannot afford to boil a kettle more than once a day. Perhaps Pat Deering might pick it up and pass it on to Enda Kenny or Michael Noonan, as I doubt either will be reading The Nationalist.
Perhaps he can also tell them of the Brendan Grace joke about the father who had no money, taking his children on the bus to Dublin. They were excited, this was it – they were going to see Santa. Instead, they left the bus at Harold’s Cross, from where the father took them to Mount Jerome Cemetery and pointed out a grave which, he told them, was where Santa was buried.
Now I don’t believe that any parent would pull that one, or anything like it, but desperation is a serious business and, as I said in that previous article, the Irish people are resilient.
But not all can cope with the serious situation they find themselves in now.
This is my third recession. In the 1950s, half a million emigrated – mainly to Britain and the US – and most would never return.
But in those hard times, the few shillings they could afford to send home were a lifeline to many families, while others lived by hunting rabbits, both for eating and selling, to make ends meet.
It was a time when the Irish farmer stood up and was counted.
Potatoes, vegetables and milk were supplied for little or nothing. Undoubtedly, there would have been many deaths without them.
This was probably the worst recession, as people had nothing. Imported food did not exist and there were no supermarkets either, so it was all down to the local community to pull together for survival.
I would say that was the most devastating recession of the three and did untold damage to the future of the country.
Now I have a few pertinent questions as to why we are where we are now.
We are being crucified because bankers got greedy and started paying themselves a hell of a lot more than they were worth. Developers were just as bad.
They could not get enough money. How much do you need to live on happily for the rest of your life? Certainly not billions, which is the road the connivers in these two professions traveled.
Unfortunately, they were so blind and so utterly stupid. They were like a baby with a new rattle, who hadn’t a clue how it worked.
They actually were so stupidly confident of their own banks that they invested your money and my money in them and lost the bloody lot.
Now let us put a few questions to the members of our government of the time who, without consultation, committed the Irish people (including the taxpayer, the pensioner, the sick and disabled, children and the unemployed) to paying for the horrendous dealings of people like Seanie Fitzpatrick, Michael Fingleton, David Drumm, Willie McAteer (the risk manager, who was responsible for the correct presentation of accounts) and the rest of the Anglo Irish gang, who are the main reason we are all suffering, while they play golf or whatever.
Then we have the sleeping financial regulator Patrick Neary, who is accused of knowing about the Anglo loans for eight years.
He is quite happy and shows no remorse for the pain he may have contributed.
Central Bank governor John Hurley would have a wee bit of sympathy from me, as he had warned for a few years that the crash was on its way. But no-one listened and he did not push the issue when he should have.
Brian Cowen and the late Brian Lenihan pulled the plug on Ireland with their late-night guarantee of all bank debts in September 2008, having been misled by CEOs Eugene Sheehy of AIB and Brian Goggin from Bank of Ireland. We, our children and our grandchildren will pay the price for buying back Ireland.