Brian Cowen buried by his own hand

THE smoking gun lying next to the corpse of the Irish economy passed through many hands – but the dominant fingerprints on it are those belonging to Mr B Cowen.

Anyone expecting a soft inside whitewash from the Government-appointed investigators was instead presented with a hard-edged backlash against the Taoiseach’s judgement while Finance Minister.

No wonder the Dáil was gagged from discussing it yesterday – no wonder the next stage of the probe has been explicitly banned by the Cabinet from scrutinising Government policy further.

The muzzled parliament was frozen in not so splendid isolation after ministers – already aware of the damning contents of the Honohan and Regling/Watson reports – insisted it must not discuss live issues this week.

The latest HSE horror story regarding pregnancy scans, 188 children dead in state “care”, two banking probes directly implicating Government policy in the crash? That was all happening in an alternate reality.

Despite strenuous opposition protests, the Government insisted the Dáil would instead deliberate on such burning issues as domestic estate charges.

It was like North Korea – but without the spectacle and colour of the mass parades.

The Ryan report was up for discussion, but as Government managers had only allocated two hours to it, that came to about two seconds per victim identified in the investigation. Then it was on to the Multi-Units Developments Bill (2009).

Meanwhile, in The Real World, just a few hundred metres from the dumbed-down Dáil, Mr Cowen was trying to weather the whirlwind he had sown while Finance Minister.

Though never identified by name, Mr Cowen’s smouldering – at times economically incendiary – prescience burned through the pages of the twin banking reports.

The decisions he took as finance minister – a finance minister given a virtual free hand by Bertie Ahern – came in for scathing assessment as neither probe shied away from appointing blame.

Central Bank governor Patrick Honohan stated bluntly that “macro-economic and budgetary policies contributed significantly to the economic overheating”.

And that under Mr Cowen’s stewardship the Government had adopted a policy of the “triumph of hope over reality” in continually predicting a soft landing.

The Taoiseach still appeared to be in that “Cloud Cowen” mode of unreality as the waves of censure from the reports came crashing over him as he adopted his usual non-apology apology approach of saying everything was rosy with hindsight and why didn’t we blame the opposition because they were urging him to increase spending as well.

Strangely, at one point, Mr Cowen said “successive governments” had come in for criticism – as if he was, somehow, not the key figure in them.

IT WAS a deeply unconvincing performance, particularly given the fact warning signs from the OECD, EU and IMF helped sound “loud alarm bells” that went unheeded as Mr Cowen insisted the “party must go on” as the orgy of unsustainable consumer credit grew into a fireball that would engulf us all as the Government poured “fuel” on the flames.

Regling and Watson lamented the strong homemade elements of the crisis which, “left the economy vulnerable to a deep crisis, with costly and extended social fallout,” while “extravagant and distortive subsidies for commercial real estate development,” distorted everything.

Even the support given to the decision to bring in the bank guarantee and keep Anglo alive is open to scrutiny. Mr Honohan cuts deeply with his deliciously underplayed suggestions that senior Anglo figures were kept on after the bailout with no regulatory action taken against them because they were “well-liked in political circles”. And you don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out which political circle liked the Golden Circle so well.

Mr Cowen has now moved to ban any further examination of Government policies in the next part of the probe.

But it is too late – politically speaking he is now as dead and buried as the corpse of the boom he busted.