RSA and Newbridge send us back to the future

Arguably one of the most positive achievements of the current Government is to have gone quite a distance in restoring the previously very tarnished international reputation of the country.

Not too long ago, Ireland was described by a German as the Wild West of the financial world; some of the Irish in Brussels had become legendary for not bothering to turn up at important EU meetings; our international competitiveness was allowed disappear; and we became arrogant and complacent about what we thought we had achieved as a nation.

Nowhere was this more evident than in the behaviour of some of our more notorious developers who developed a swagger and a ‘big swinging dick, master of the universe’ mentality that Gordon Gekko would have been proud of.