Seánie faces crushing blow from lucky raffle winner

IT’S an opportunity too good to miss — a once in a lifetime, couldn’t-pass-it-up chance to get back at one of the bankers who broke the country.

In a charity raffle that’s likely to prove very popular, the lucky winner gets to crush disgraced banker Seán FitzPatrick’s BMW — to their heart’s content.

Just after 10am yesterday, workers from the National Recycling company towed away the 3 series ’92 BMW from Seánie’s lavish gated house in Greystones, Co Wicklow.

Until Christmas the car — which has no NCT or insurance, mould growing in its seats and an engine which has stopped working completely — was owned by the disgraced banker’s family. In late December it was purchased by National Recycling for €1,234.56 in an online state auction of repossessed items.

The Clondalkin-based company’s sales manager Conor Hand said the firm was at first unaware of the car’s previous owners.

However, once they were informed Mr Hand said the decision to organise a charity raffle for the right to press the button on a scrapping machine to destroy the vehicle — which is now plastered with “nationalised” stickers — was the only option on the agenda.

“We hope to do what should have been done to the banks and crush it,” he said.

“We were a bit surprised when we did find out. I’ve never even met him on the golf course,” he added.

The winner of the raffle could just as easily request a more personal touch along the lines of horror novelist Stephen King.

The writer — who was run over in 1999, suffering a collapsed lung, multiple leg fractures, deep cuts to his scalp and a broken hip — infamously bought the car after leaving hospital, before beating it into pieces with a baseball bat.

* National Recycling: 01-4579021.