Somebody by the name of Simon Kelly wrote an article recently in the Sunday Tribune thanking Anglo Irish Bank for being there to help the Irish people in the early days of the Celtic Tiger.
According to Kelly thousands of jobs would not have been created if Anglo wasn’t there to support business and grow the economy.
In other words Kelly is saying that the countless billions needed to keep zombie Anglo alive is a fair price to pay for a few thousand jobs.
This is akin to saying – Ok, Hitler had his failings but he created thousands of jobs building the autobahns, or, the people of Haiti should be thankful for the massive death and destruction visited on their country by the earthquake because the disaster resulted in massive international aid.
Here are a few more gems of wisdom from this former developer.
It’s a national phenomenon (the financial crisis) caused by the actions of hundreds of thousands of people, each in their own way causing a boom, and now a bust.
Everybody had skin in the game so stop looking for scapegoats as a way to hide personal guilt.
So I say to Charlie Bird and the like; get off David’s lawn and get out of Sean’s front drive. They have lost everything but they still have to live. The bank failed because we all failed.
If you want to know what caused the crash and the failure of Anglo, have a look in the mirror. We all built the boom and we all caused the bust.
So there you have it, we’re all to blame for what went on in Anglo. Seanie and the others are being scapegoated just so we can all hide our personal guilt for the part we played in destroying the country.
So who is this Simon Kelly? Well, it turns out he’s none other than the son of property developer Paddy Kelly. I wrote about Kelly Snr. after listening to an interview he gave to Eamon Dunphy in November 2009.
The interview occurred before the putrefying stench from Anglo had seeped out and infected the entire nation.
Like his son, Paddy Kelly also blamed others for the financial disaster. It was the fault of the planning process; it was the fault of government policy.
Kelly openly admitted that ‘brown envelopes’ were taken to smooth out planning problems that were so tedious, they would try the patience of Job. He also admitted that he would build anywhere no matter what the consequences once he got planning permission.
When asked about Anglo he said:
Well, I think of the skill of Anglo Irish and the people involved, those people are so creative.
All the banks are in danger but you’ll find that as the weeks go on Anglo Irish are in very good shape and you’d be surprised how good the quality is of the people in there…watch Anglo and be optimistic.
We can see from this interview and the Sunday Tribune article why the Kelly’s are failed property developers but I don’t think the people of Ireland, who will be paying for the activities of the ‘creative’ people in Anglo for decades to come, will appreciate being blamed for the recklessness and greed of property developers and bankers.
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Simon Kelly