Letter in Sunday Independent.
Legislate and punish the guilty
Sir,
The evisceration of the Fianna Fail party is simply not enough. We owe it to ourselves and our future, invested as it is in large measure in our children, to punish those responsible inside the body politic for the annihilation of our economy.
The crime of economic treason dates back to the French Revolution where it was exacted against the Ancien Regime in ways alien to our civilised sensibilities. The idea, therefore, as a law is hardly new.
In April 2010, Eamon Gilmore in the Dail accused Brian Cowen of having committed economic treason in relation to the September 30 bank guarantee.
The Green Party later on that year attempted to have economic treason legally defined and introduced into the Constitution. The proposed bill unsurprisingly got nowhere.
The Government of the 31st Dail must draft such a bill making it retrospective to 1994.
Considering the fiscal, social, and very personal financial ‘holocaust’ that 14 years of mostly Ahern-led government has wreaked upon this nation, such a proposition can hardly be said to be unreasonable.
It is repugnant to the very core of our identity to witness the sight of the lords and ladies of mis-rule scurrying off like members of a defunct Third World regime, while our sons, and daughters, our brightest and the best, are forced to endure coercive emigration. What kind of justice is that? Let us make a good law and use it; let us punish the guilty, and let us use the law of economic treason to do so.
Only then can we at least offer posterity, not to mention ourselves, some validation of our worth as free citizens in a free republic, rather than submit like downtrodden serfs to the power of our overlords.
Pierce Martin
Celbridge, Co Kildare
Mr. Martine is absolutely correct in his assessment of what needs to happen before we can start to build a new republic. The greedy traitors will, in the end, be brought to justice.
I believe this will happen because what has happened to us is not the bog standard incidence of political corruption that has plagued our country for decades, what we have witnessed is the complete destruction of our country.
There is no escape from the pain and suffering to come and that pain and suffering will last for decades.
I just cannot believe that even the docile, politically ignorant Irish people will accept decades of impoverishment while the traitorous bastards who are responsible for our destruction ride off into the sunset with their ill gotten gains.
I’m surprised at your optimism that justice will prevail in this matter.
Good letter; ridiculous aspiration. And you should know better too. Fine Gael or more correctly “Fianna ‘fail’.” as they are often referred to on FB. Nothing of the sort will be done and no Irish laws will be enacted as dreamed of in that leter. The Supreme Court just recently sanctioned the giving over of the €775billion asset, the Corrib field, to Shell for one Euro; comprendevous?
I have to agree. They already have, and are, going off to their cushy post-dail jobs or retirements.
An independent inquiry into the ministry of finance found that it was working and reporting fine – there could be a quicker reporting cycle and more could me documented more carefully, but basically the joint Canadian and Dutch team found it to work fine.
And they DID warn Fianna Fail about the bubble. They DID warn them about how the Irish banks were over-exposed to the developers.
This was broadcast yesterday on the radio – as it turns out, fianna fail lied when they said they acted according to the best advice. Never mind that that is an admission of incompetence in itself. It is also an outright lie.
Do you see anyone doing anything? Are there any protests? Is there any call for real political reform?