Banking Inquiry: One last scene for fallen stars of Celtic Tiger era

The banking inquiry was redolent with film references as two fallen stars from the Celtic Tiger’s silver screen era, Mary Harney and John Gormley, took a stroll down the political equivalent of Sunset Boulevard one last time.

As their regrets and reminisces intertwined, committee chairman Ciarán Lynch mused that if the crash were a movie the two pivotal scenes would be the bank guarantee night and the nationalisation of Anglo.

Unfortunately, neither witness had prominent roles in the guarantee drama because Ms Harney was not invited to the early hours decision-making meeting, while Gormley was, but decided to stay under the duvet instead.

Linda Evangelista famously said she would not get out of bed for $10,000; sadly, on guarantee night, then Green leader Mr Gormley would not get out from under the covers for €64bn.

Not that anyone knew such would be the cost of the panic-stricken gamble taken by Brian Cowen and Brian Lenihan, but if Mr Gormley had bothered to accept their invite to attend, perhaps history would be slightly less unkind to him and the party he left all but destroyed.

Indeed, to paraphrase well known political philosophers The Monkees on Daydream Believer: “Wake up sleepy Green/Oh what can it mean/you were an environmental dreamer who stayed home and now your party are has-beens.” Defending his decision to stay away, Mr Gormley said: “I don’t think it would have changed one thing if I was present”, which could have served as the motto for the Greens’ pointless stint in government.

Ms Harney came across as the assured political operator she always was, mixing empathy with all absence of blame, apart from the odd admitted mistake, while Mr Gormley remains in denial.

Summing up the plot of the crash believed by many, Mr Gormley told the committee: “Chairman, you compared it to a movie, I think a narrative has evolved around the guarantee which goes something like this: 1) The bank guarantee was the worst decision ever made in this country and all our woes stem from it, 2) that Fianna Fáil was up to something shady with Anglo, and 3) the Greens did not know what the hell was going on. But I don’t think the evidence supports that narrative.”

But then, how central was he to the action as he seemed to rely on a celebrity economist for much of his information, especially regarding what Mr Lenihan was up to, stating at one point: “I was hearing what the minister was thinking from David McWilliams.” Curious.

Then, talking of what life was like in government, he accidently expressed what the FF-Green handling of the crash looked like to the rest of the country: “Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did.”