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We need to stop pandering to the ‘cute hoor’
By Paul Mills
Somehow, sometime, somewhere, we are going to have to call stop.
If we do not review who we are, what we want and decide how we want our country to be, if we do not go back to the basics that matter and if we do not stop doing things that add no value, we are destined to continue down this slippery slope into oblivion and irrelevancy.We stand for something or we do not. We need to have people responsible for their actions and we need for people to be accountable. That goes from the bottom of the pile to the very top.
The “main” issue over the last week was Mick Wallace’s fray with the Revenue. That is at the same time both a sideshow and a statement of who we are. It is predicated on the view that rules are meant to be broken. Laws are just more rules. Getting caught is the main crime and being “Jack the Lad” is oh so ok.
We have a history of rewarding politicians who have diddled the taxman.
Indeed, those currently in power have no difficulty consorting quite openly with a former member who still sits in the Dáil but who played fast and loose with tax laws. The only censure that seems to be applied by the Dáil is one where the offender gets a two weeks’ paid holiday, as has happened in other cases. Nobody resigns and, indeed, nobody is thrown out.
Indeed, one is likely to get an even bigger vote next time out.
When highly placed people who break tax laws are not being held accountable, it is no surprise that others might think that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. When that person is an elected politician it makes the matter worse. Yet we continue to not do accountability. The “cute hoor” is admired.
Unfortunately, it’s not just politicians who do not do accountability. It was reported recently that over 1,600 employees across four banks still earn over €100,000, with 43 of them earning over €200,000 and 18 over €300,000. I know this next comment is, possibly unfairly, going to tar all of these people with the same brush. However, we should not forget that the banks over which these guys had full operational control were the prime drivers bringing our economy to its sorry state as they raced one another to see who could take the biggest risks and make them richer.
Seeing the Euro 2012 photographs of Seanie FitzPatrick in Poland at his €550-per-night hotel room, as the bank which he controlled was so badly managed that €35bn of EU and IMF money had to be sought to “put it right”, angered many people.
Accountancy firms are tasked with many things but one of the most important is that of the completing the statutory audit of client companies on behalf of the State. We know of the myriad of errors, and that’s being charitable, made in these audits for which millions were charged and received. Two of the biggest problem children we now know to be Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide Building Society, yet both had clean bills of health from their auditors going back several years. Have these auditors been censured by theirprofessional body or by the state? Not on your nelly.
But the auditors for these two companies are not the only culprits. There are many more. However, not only have all of these companies not paid any price for their serious failings but they are the favourites of Nama, et al, to do their consultancy work.
That other old adage that goes “if you always do as you always did you always get what you always got” has it right.
The same old faces and the same old companies have been at it long enough.
It’s time to move on and do things differently. That’s what we elected this Government for. We are badly disappointed so far.
business@examiner.ie
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