A Red Baron, a black mood and a whitewash

APRIL 21 has always been a momentous day in world history.

It saw Romulus slay his brother Remus in 753BC to found the glory that would be Rome; it gave birth in 1509 to Henry VIII who would later unleash religious genocide in these islands; in 1918 it marked the demise of the dreaded Red Baron after he himself had notched up 80 kills in the Great Air War and in 1989 it saw the beginning of the seven-week student occupation of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square which would end in massacre.

And what did it deliver unto history in 2010? Well, Brian Cowen inched ever so slightly towards acknowledging outraged public opinion and murmured the mildest of rebukes in the Dáil against big salaries at the bailed-out banks.

It was not quite the Obamaesque war cry to shake down Wall Street and make the merchants of greed kneel and show gratitude for the taxpayer cleaning up their self-created mess, but it’s probably the most we’re ever going to get, as the Taoiseach told TDs: “I hold no brief for any bank executive or bank in respect of these matters nor am I here to justify it.”

Well no, but presumably you are in the Dáil to actually do something about it, Taoiseach – what with the generosity of the taxpayer being the only thing standing in between these bank bosses and the dole queue?

But, alas it seems not, either the Government didn’t sort out the legislation properly to control the pay and pensions of the top brass of guaranteed institutions, or it just doesn’t want to. Eeither way it’s not going to happen.

Which drew the Dáil’s own would-be Red Baron, Labour’s Eamon Gilmore, to train his fire on the generous Irish Nationwide package given to Michael “Fingers” Fingleton after the troubled institution was taken under the state’s wing at a cost to the taxpayer of €2.7bn, and rising.

Mr Gilmore dive-bombed the Taoiseach for a second day in a row in Leaders Questions, coming across like a cut-price Poirot as he used his first intervention to all but make an accusation about what Mr Cowen really knew of the rather unusual business practices at Nationwide at the time it was demutialised.

The Labour leader builds to such a nudge-nudge crescendo at the end of question one that the chamber is almost left expecting the infamous Eastenders cliff-hanger theme “Dum-dum-dum-dum dum-dum...” to kick in.

We breathlessly await the killer revelation he must surely have up his sleeve for question two after the Taoiseach has denied any involvement in anything untoward in his answer to question one.

But we never quite get to the smoking gun, as Mr Gilmore suddenly pulls back, uttering something opaque, like: “I think that you need to be a lot more frank with the Dáil and the Irish public about the state of your knowledge about the conduct of Nationwide during the period you were minister for finance, because it is not credible,” before resuming his seat with a knowing smirk on his face and thus leaving the original accusation hanging in the air – and the public mind.

This tactic annoys the hell out of the Taoiseach, who then begins muttering about “conspiracy theories” and the such.

But the truth is out there – somewhere – because what was allowed to happen in the financial sector to bring the country to the brink of collapse, and the current fiasco regarding resurgent pay packets in bailed-out banks is either conspiracy or cock-up – and neither explanation paints this Government in a particularly good light.