Time for buck to stop with transgressors in Ireland’s economics

Harry S Truman, US president in the late 50s, is credited with not only using the phrase ‘the buck stops here’ but also having a sign on his desk with that phrase on it, writes Paul Mills. 

The meaning was simple — he made decisions and had to accept responsibility for them. I do not know if Truman followed his own motto, but whether he did or not does not take away from the importance of the concept.

In Ireland, however, we are followers of the concept that ‘that success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan’. The nett effect is that when anything goes wrong, when tens of billions of taxpayers’ money goes awry or when the economy is destroyed by the failure of senior mandarins and politicians to do the job they are well paid for, they are not held accountable.