Ireland: A state of secrecy

Nat O’Connor, political scientist and policy analyst with TASC, was on Morning Ireland (3rd report) explaining how government secrecy was bad for business and chokes democracy.

The report confirms that Ireland is one of the most secretive countries in the Western world.

A comparative study was made of all the advanced industrial countries in the OECD and, not surprisingly, Ireland is at the bottom.

Some examples: Information on government decisions in Holland is available within six weeks. In the Czech Republic 30 days and in South Korea, ten days.

Ireland, according to Mr. O’Connor is in a category of its own (isnt it always?).

Citizens could be waiting up to ten years before papers are released on government decisions.

This policy is, in effect, a total blackout on information because after ten years the decisions taken are merely historical and the damage caused by bad or corrupt decisions will have been done.

We don’t have a financial regulator in Ireland but if we did…

Did you hear about that ‘systems failure’ at Bank of Ireland? No, no, not the overdraft ‘error‘ – that was this week’s error.

I’m referring to last week’s ‘error’ involving ATMs.

I know, I know, it’s difficult to keep up with the ‘systems failure industry’ in Irish banking.

Anyway, last week’s episode involved what RTE described as silly people walking away from ATM machines without their card or money.

Here’s the RTE report (My emphasis).

But in 2005, Bank of Ireland was upgrading its anti-fraud technology on its ATMs and somehow neglected to reactivate the ‘automatic re-crediting’ process, so if you did forget your money, the machine took it back but your account wasn’t re-credited.

In October 2009, the problem was fixed, but during those four years there were tens of thousands of people who forgot their money.

Half of those people realised something had gone wrong and got in touch with the bank to reclaim their money.

But 44,000 didn’t: 14,000 of them were Bank of Ireland account holders, another 29,000 were other bank account holders using Bank of Ireland ATMs.

Today €1.3m has been returned by Bank of Ireland to its customers; another €1.7m is being given to other banks to return to their customers who were affected.

A lovely spokesperson from the bank gently explained that people did tend to get distracted by phone calls or their children – silly, silly people.

But never mind Bank of Ireland has come to the rescue.

Customers are to be fully reimbursed, enhanced procedures have been introduced to ensure this ‘silly mistake’ never occurs again, and, every customer is to be issued with a free, gold plated, apology.

We don’t have a financial regulator in Ireland but if we did the following question might have been put to Bank of Ireland.

Why did it take you four whole years to act on this ‘error’ when all during that four years thousands upon thousands of customers were telling you that the automatic re-crediting process was dysfunctional or to put it another way.

Why did you allow this situation to continue for four years when you obviously knew there was a problem that was resulting in significant loss to customers?

We don’t have a financial regulator in Ireland but if we did Bank of Ireland would have been heavily fined and the person/s responsible for the four year ‘error’ would be under serious investigation by police.

We don’t have a financial regulator in Ireland but if we did consumers would not be subject to a well established ‘system failure industry’ that ‘somehow’ always enriches the banks and impoverishes the customer.

Some bored and anonymous official within the joke organisation that masquerades as a financial regulator pushed the by now well worn button marked ‘standard press release drivel’ and out spewed:

The Financial Regulator expects all firms to have appropriate systems and control in place to prevent errors, or rectify them quickly.

Hey, did you hear about the latest bank ‘systems failure’? It involves an ‘error’ in overdrafts….

Copy to:
Bank of Ireland
So called Financial Regulator

Official? – Gardai act according to political priorities

Unwittingly, Michael Noonan, the Fine Gael spokesperson on finance has let the cat out of the bag regarding the relationship between politicians and the Gardai (RTE News, 5th report).

Last Tuesday, after complaining about the slow pace of the so called Garda investigation into Anglo Irish Bank, Mr. Noonan was asked did he think there was some political foot dragging.

His reply was interesting and very revealing:

Public servants, including Gardai and senior civil servants, always try to act on what they regard as ministers and government priorities and they obviously feel that there isn’t an urgency because these matters are not priorities with government.

In real democracies the police act on crime and reports of crime. In Ireland, according to Mr. Noonan, they act according to political priorities.

This explains why white collar crime is virtually unknown in Ireland.

Parish pump politics – Alive and well

From the Attic Archives.

Cork Examiner (?) 15th January 1992

Martin calls for change

Ireland’s financial and economic woes will never be solved until the country rids itself of its ‘unhealthy emphasis on parish pump politics’, Fianna Fail Deputy Michael Martin stated in a hard-hitting address in Cork last night.

Deputy Martin added that the current political, electoral and parliamentary systems waste too much time and need to be radically overhauled if the economy is to thrive.

His statements were made during an address to the Munster and Connaught Society of the Chartered Association of Certified Accountants.

Well, we know what happened – the economy is dead but parish pump politics is alive and well.

Idiots and the tragedy of Ireland

Apologies in advance for the use of strong language in response to an editorial in last Saturday’s Irish Independent.

The piece must surely qualify as the stupidest, most ill informed editorial penned in recent years.

The editorial, responding to the ‘sensational’ revelation that bankers tell lies, needs to be analysed line by line to expose the full ignorance of the idiot who penned it.

The level of ambiguity displayed by the banks in the lead-up to the €440bn bailout by those taxpayers was finally laid bare before the Dail Public Accounts committee.

Only now is it beginning to impinge on the brain of this idiot that Irish banks are ‘ambiguous’.

At this rate it will take him decades to realise that the Irish financial sector is infested with ruthless scumbags who are supported and protected by politicians and an incompetent ‘regularity’ system that does exactly as it’s told – to do whatever it takes to protect the interests of the scumbags.

It is these scumbags, in collusion with a corrupt political system, who are principally responsible for the destruction of our country and the strongest word the idiot can muster is ‘ambiguous’?

It smacked of an attitude and era which fostered recklessness and risk-taking beyond belief.

Obviously, the idiot believes that the ‘attitude’ and the ‘era’ are behind us.

He obviously believes the bullshit that spews from the mouths of Cowen and Lenihan about the country/economy turning corners.

He believes the bullshit that spews from the mouths of politicians and so called regulators that a new era of financial regulation has dawned, that Irish citizens are now safe from the thieving maws of the scumbags who infest the financial sector.

This is a typical, narrow brained, Irish reaction to unpleasant realities.

Brutal realities can be safely ignored if they’re consigned to the past. And because they’re in the past they don’t require any action so everybody can ‘go forward’ into the future full of light and happiness.

Never mind that the same ruthless bankers are still in place, never mind that the same corrupt political system is still in place, never mind that there is, in reality, no financial regulation whatsoever in this country, never mind all that.

The important thing to keep in mind is that, finally, bankers have been found to be ‘ambiguous’ – halleluiah.

We should not forget what was divulged this week. Banks bluffed in public about the state of their finances. They were, at the very least, disingenuous in the way they presented their financial health.

The idiot obviously believes that Irish bankers getting caught bluffing in public is an event of earthquake proportions, that nothing like it has ever happened before, that such a ‘crime’ must never be forgotten.

Clearly, the idiot has lived his entire life in a hole on the Skellig Islands

In doing so, they (the bankers) increased exponentially the amount of liability taxpayers have had to guarantee. They left our senior politicians and civil servants with few options.

The depth of ignorance displayed by this statement is deeply disturbing. The idiot seems to be totally unaware of the part played by incompetent and/or corrupt politicians and civil servants in the destruction of our country.

He believes, apparently, that all this came upon the politicians and civil servants suddenly, that they, like the idiot, were completely unaware, over many decades, of the rampant criminality common within the Irish financial sector.

It hasn’t yet occurred to the idiot that the total absence of effective financial regulation is no accident.

Perhaps he believes that the Soviet style secrecy laws that provide water tight protection for the scumbags just suddenly dropped out of the sky leaving our politicians and civil servants with few options.

Perhaps the idiot thinks that, despite decades of fraud and criminality within the financial sector, there’s nothing odd about the fact that not a single official or institution has ever faced a judge; that it was only in 2008, after beggaring the nation; that a financial institution came under investigation?

Perhaps the idiot even believes that the current investigation is an actual real investigation and not the standard Irish strategy of bluff, delay and obfuscation that will, ultimately, result in a non effective/irrelevant report years down the line.

What we have learned, and no doubt have yet to discover, about how some lending institutions behaved should never, ever be forgotten. Not this year, not next, never.

What we have learned has already been forgotten. Ansbacher, DIRT and dozens of other scams, costing Irish taxpayers countless millions, have all been forgotten.

How many times have we heard a politician/banker tell the nation – the past is another country, we must move forward, must make sure this never happens again – blah, blah, blah. Apparently, the idiot believes it all.

It is to our eternal credit as a nation that we have, despite a deep-seated anger, knuckled down and borne the inevitable.

The impression given here is that the people of Ireland, realising the seriousness of the situation, have united in a patriotic movement to save the nation.

This, of course, is total bullshit. Irish citizens, since independence, have sold their votes to the local chancer in return for small favours. The local chancer was more than happy to buy power so cheaply and use it to his own advantage.

This buying and selling of votes/democracy has corrupted the administration of the country and resulted in a politically ignorant electorate.

Irish citizens are incapable of voting, thinking or acting in the national interest, they act solely in self-interest or in the interest of a particular group of which they belong.

If Irish citizens were politically educated, if they were aware that it is they and not their corrupt leaders who hold power, the current government would have been thrown out of power in 2008 when disaster struck.

The greatest indictment of Irish democracy is that this government and in particular Fianna Fail are still in power, still working in their own interests at the expense of the nation and Irish citizens just lie down and take it.

Yet when we look in on ourselves, there is a source of great hope. And it is to ourselves we must look, because we are the ones carrying this country on our shoulders.

I don’t know what circles this idiot operates in but my sense of the country is not one of hope but despair.

Yes, ordinary citizens are carrying the country on their shoulders but it is not by choice. Citizens are being forced to suffer and pay for the corruption, incompetence, greed and arrogance of the ruling elite while that same ruling elite are busily insulating themselves against the disaster.

Bitter lessons have been learned.

What lessons? Could this idiot provide the nation with a single example of a lesson learned?

The tragedy of Ireland is that its people are oppressed by their political ignorance to the point of docility when, in this time of national crisis, the complete opposite is required.

The people of Ireland need to do what the people of Iceland did – eject from office all those responsible for betraying the nation.

They need to educate themselves on what real democracy is all about so that if a politician or banker ever threatens the national interest again they will quickly find themselves behind bars.

The very last thing the Irish people need is the self-indulgent; everything will be all right if we just ignore reality, kind of drivel contained in this editorial.

Copy to:
The idiot

White collar crime – Unknown in Ireland

Speaking on Today FM recently (18th July) economist, Brian Keenan expressed astonishment at the bizarre reaction of the Department of the Environment regarding a Sunday Tribune report that alleged planners were bribed by developers during the boom.

According to the Sunday Tribune the alleged scam worked as follows:

Before apartments went on sale, the planners would sign a contract allowing them to buy some at a discounted price. The following day the apartments would be sold on to unsuspecting buyers at the market price, with the planner pocketing the difference.

Sam Smyth described the practice, which is alleged to have been widespread, as the perfect crime.

Keenan described as bizarre the reaction of the Department of the Environment which said that while it was aware of the allegations it would require prima facie evidence to investigate.

Smyth made the comment that if that was the standard of evidence required then nobody would ever be caught for anything – Exactly Sam.

During the discussion Keenan expressed surprise, given the size of the boom, that the actual incidence of crime and theft has been surprisingly low.

There’s a very simple, but rarely acknowledged, reason for this phenomenon.

In a corrupt state it is in the interests of those with power and influence to cover up such crimes.

This strategy has been so successful in Ireland that the category ‘white collar crime’ is almost completely unknown.

Irish inability to call a spade a spade

The editorial in last week’s Sunday Business Post calling on Senator Callely to resign is a typical example of how difficult it is for Irish people to call a spade a spade.

On the one hand the writer states:

It is not the case that most or even many politicians are in Callely’s class when it comes to abusing the system of expenses and allowances.

This is immediately followed by:

But politicians of all parties have designed and exploited disgracefully a system of allowances and expenses which any private business would find outrageously loose.

What, I wonder; is the editor thinking when he writes ‘all parties have disgracefully exploited the system’ but only a minority are in ‘Callely’s class’ when it comes to abusing the same system?

Is the editor so naïve and ill informed that he believe that Callely’s behaviour is the worst ever and that while all other politicians are exploiting the system their behaviour is not as bad as Callely’s?

Does the editor really believe that only a minority of politicians are ripping off the system?

Here’s what a properly informed editor should have written.

Politicians of all parties have designed and exploited a system of allowances and expenses that enables them to legally defraud taxpayer’s of massive amount of money on an annual basis.

This contemptible behaviour will continue until somebody designs a system where this behaviour results in a jail sentence.

Copy to:
Editor, Sunday Business Post

Putrid bog of corruption still in place

I see the editor of the Irish Times shares my suspicions regarding political interference in NAMA.

When Minister for Tourism Mary Hanafin talks about meeting the National Asset Management Agency (Nama) to discuss the management and disposal of hotels that have been acquired by way of bad bank loans, alarms should blare.

Any political interference in the management of these assets by Nama will destroy public confidence in the agency and fuel suspicion that political cronyism is at work.

Editorials like this will become very common over the coming decades as political cronyism eats away at the fleshier elements of NAMAs treasury.

There will be a long line of politicians, from every party, carrying out smash and grab raids on NAMA to enrich themselves and their friends.

This will happen because, despite the destruction of our country by a corrupt body politic, that corrupt system is still fully in place.

Corruption, financial and political, is the putrid bog on which our country operates and nothing substantial will change until those who support and benefit from it are removed from office.