Confronting white-collar crime: We need new culture more than new law

At this stage, our national response to a new white-collar crime scandal is as formalised as any Kabuki masterwork.

Outrage mellows to harmless indignation as quickly as the tide turns; an initial determination, stridently expressed, to hold those indicted “to account” runs into the quagmire that passes for regulation or sanction in this Republic of opportunists.

A throw-the-dog-another-bone tribunal is established. Squadrons of legal professionals line up in a highly-lucrative polonaise. Reports — sometimes redacted — are published.

The idea of deterring the next white collar criminal by jailing the last one is left untested. Little enough if anything changes. Cynicism is nurtured and, tragically, justified.

If all of those who spent this bank holiday weekend in jail because they were convicted of a white-collar crime were granted a furlough on a Spring bank holiday weekend to play in a golf pro-ams, so beloved of the white-collar classes, that exclusive group would have to be supplemented to make up more than four or five fourballs.

Despite the roller-coaster ride of the last decade very, very few of those involved in the greatest destruction of wealth in the history of this State are behind bars.

Rather, their return to the work that brought this society to its knees was made possible by a generation-draining taxpayer rescue.

In world terms, this generosity of spirit, this ability to turn the other cheek — unless you’re a sex offender — puts Ireland in an almost unique position.

Tragically, we tolerate white-collar crime as if it was a cost of doing business. We seem to imagine that, as we do with alcoholism, that white-collar crime makes the central actor a victim rather than a perpetrator. We do not challenge much less sanction.

This sad state of affairs may be a legacy from a more deferential but what a price we pay. That deference is at the root of the tracker mortgage scam. Laughably, as if in a Kabuki tragedy, official Ireland’s response, expressed by the Central Bank, is to suggest that no crime was committed.

It would seem prudent to establish if that judgment is shared by other arms of the State, maybe those at a step or two removed from banking — the attorney general’s office say.

It is also indicative of how easily the agenda is manipulated that the tracker scandal has generated such fury. It does not diminish the hardship caused by the scam to point out that it pales into irrelevance compared to the fate awaiting scores of thousands of people whose paid-for pensions evaporated during the economic collapse.

Why not a pensions’ inquiry? Why not a pensions redress board now that the banks are back in multi-million profits territory? Don’t hold your breath.

Later this week legislation to try to better control financial institutions will be announced. This legislation has been in the pipeline since 2012 so, sadly, the five-year gestation points to the deep aversion to confronting white-collar crime. Of course, new legislation is very welcome but it will be an utterly empty exercise, an almost anti-democratic distraction, unless it is matched by a new cultural determination confront this social cancer. As in so many other issues this is a trial of our democracy and Government rather than a trial of white-colar criminals. Let’s hope they pass it.