The decision not to impose a custodial sentence in the Anglo Irish Bank corruption trial will fuel the sense of injustice, pointlessness and disenchantment that has convinced many people, far too many people, that State officialdom is incapable of, or ultimately disinterested in, standing between citizens and the social havoc out-of-control capitalism can wreak.

The three leading defence counsel in the Anglo trial shared over €1m (including Vat) in State fees for their work in the criminal courts.

It looks like the Anglo trial is all over bar the sentencing but, in reality, the saga has a long way to go before it has exhausted public interest and ceased to be in the public interest.

Can you imagine the outcry if charges had been preferred against Anglo executives but not Seánie?

The acquittal of bankrupt former banker Seán FitzPatrick has not ended his struggles with the criminal justice system.

The first two people to be convicted of crimes related to the collapse of Anglo Irish Bank are likely to receive softer sentences because of the role the financial regulator’s office played in their activity.

A significant portion of the 11-week trial was taken up by sometimes heated argument in the absence of the jury focusing on the issue of legal advice taken by Anglo at the time of the Maple plan.

Deep-seated fears in the public mind, verging almost on suspicion, that bankers would ‘get away with it’ after being directly involved in the kind of financial crisis which brought this country to its knees, have finally been dispelled.

At the Greencore AGM in May 2005, a group of dissident and highly vocal shareholders lashed out at the then CEO David Dilger over the company’s sluggish growth performance.

The devastation wreaked on boom-to-bust Ireland by the collapse of Anglo was barely touched on in the landmark fraud trial.

The sequence of events leading up to the offences can be traced back to a meeting in a Navan hotel in September 2007 involving Ireland’s then richest man and two Anglo Irish Bank directors.

THE impact the collapse of Anglo Irish Bank has had on the country has been complex but the criminal trial that emerged from it was strangely simple.

The sentence hearing of former Anglo Irish Bank directors Pat Whelan and William McAteer will take place on April 28 following their conviction on charges of providing illegal lending to the Maple Ten for a share support scheme.

Former Anglo Irish Bank chairman Seán FitzPatrick has been acquitted on all counts of permitting illegal lending for the purchase of Anglo shares.