You can’t make a decision if you don’t exist, rules Supreme Court

AS John B Keane’s widow Mary is fond of saying: “you have to be awful smart when you’re dealing with stupid people”.

The Supreme Court didn’t quite put it that way but they could be forgiven for having been in that frame of mind when considering the ramifications surrounding the Government’s handling of Ireland’s economic freefall.

Yesterday the nation’s seven most senior judges held in favour of developer Paddy McKillen in his legal challenge to stop the state’s “bad bank”, the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA), taking control of €2.1 billion in loans, overturning an earlier ruling that NAMA properly acquired the loans owed by the property investor’s companies.