Banks put the squeeze on us while gardaí get to grips with McDowell

RECORD profits of €1.7 billion last year were not enough for AIB. They want more. Unlike Oliver, they are not on the breadline, being the country’s biggest bank with a 23% increase in profits for the past 12 months.

This equals €6.8 million profit for every single working day of last year, and much of it came from their customers in this country, many of whom were victims of the same bank through its previous nefarious dealings.

AIB is the pillar of financial institutions which sank to illegal foreign exchange practices, concealed information from the financial regulator and had senior executives linked to offshore tax-dodging schemes.

And apart from a critical report by the Irish Financial Services Regulatory Authority (IFSRA), the bank did all of this with impunity and was left eventually to carry out its own internal discipline.

Less than two years ago, AIB and Bank of Ireland were described in a study by the Consumers Association of Ireland (CAI) as “creaming profits at their clients’ expense.”

CAI chief executive Dermott Jewell called on the Competition Authority to make a “determined effort” to break the stranglehold of the big banks in this country. However, it would appear that the Government is quite happy with the present situation, to judge from Taoiseach Bertie Ahern.

Possibly with an eye to a future career, he defended AIB, although he seemed grudgingly to admit that greater competition was needed.

Labour leader Pat Rabbitte wasn’t quite so impressed with the bank’s balance sheet. Describing AIB’s performance as the highest rate of profitability in Europe, he pointed out that the two major Irish banks take three times more in profit per customer than the average bank in Europe.

“It is obvious that some of this is excessive profit-making. There is a lack of competition,” he said.

Without putting a tooth in it, he declared: “Hundreds of thousands of ordinary bank customers are being milked to contribute to excessive profits.”

The gardaí, meanwhile, have been showing their molars to Justice Minister Michael McDowell over his plans for a reserve police force. Most of them have made it perfectly plain they don’t want to know about it. Despite the fact that they have told the minister they will not co-operate, he is insisting that the plan will go ahead because it is Government policy and now the law of the land.

Not that the two always coincide. Just think of the nursing home scandal during which successive governments defrauded people by illegally imposing charges on them. Not a single bob has been repaid yet, although the law of the land said the charges should never have been imposed in the first place.

The minister has already warned the gardaí against confrontation and said the will of the Oireachtas would have to be obeyed.

He surely remembers the ‘blue flu’ of a few years ago when our police force was infected by an illness that prevented most of them from reporting for duty - all on the same day. It’s likely that the same bug, or some similar strain, could strike down our force, despite the law of the land, or even the Oireachtas.

Maybe the minister is an optimist, but Dermot O’Donnell, president of the Garda Representative Association (GRA), declared in no uncertain manner this week that they wouldn’t have anything to do with the reserve force.

In fact, he went so far as to describe the minister’s current pet notion as being not just “somewhat crazy,” but “extremely dangerous.”

That was at a meeting in Sligo held jointly with the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors (AGSI) and attended by 1,000 members. Other meetings are scheduled for Cork, Dublin and Portlaoise.

At the Sligo meeting, Joe Dirwan, president of the AGSI, also said that, in principle, they were against the very idea of a reserve. “Yet the minister is proceeding with his plans and we see no alternative but to adopt the policy of non-cooperation.”

It’s a sign of the depth of feeling within the force that these two representative bodies came together to express their opposition to the plan, which would eventually see 4,000 part-time reservists in the force, with 900 of them on the beat next September.

THE last time the gardaí held such joint meetings was in 1998 during a bitter pay dispute which saw the emergence of the so-called blue flu and the decimation of GRA ranks.

The way things are shaping up at the moment, Mr McDowell might have to call on his reserves a bit sooner than he thought, otherwise we might have reason to complain that there’s never a uniform around when we need it.

I couldn’t help feeling a bit cynical the other night when I heard the minister say on television that the reserve did not equate with policing on the cheap. In the same breath he admitted they would not be paid. If that’s not policing on the cheap - and part-time, at that - then I don’t know what is. He doesn’t seem to credit the general force with too much intelligence either because, in between his admonitions, he urged them to talk about what was really proposed rather than what they thought was proposed.

I suspect the gardaí know exactly what he proposes, or rather what Garda Commissioner Noel Conroy proposes, as the minister made clear this week who was behind the whole idea.

Even though Mr McDowell has embraced the proposals wholeheartedly, and is making most of the running, he made it plain whose proposals they were... just in case. With a substantial section of the force promising non co-operation, he needs a fall-back position.

But the minister can’t blame the commissioner for failing to deliver on the 2,000 full-time gardaí promised before the last general election - a promise abandoned as soon as the minister had his old job back.

This time round the promise is for 4,000 wannabe police extras, so the reckoning would appear to be that this figure equals twice the number of phantoms.

After urging the gardaí not to engage in confrontation, the minister then warned them that, having spoken to the Taoiseach, “we are determined that the will of the Oireachtas and the Government will be implemented.”

Bertie probably said, sotto voce, “less of the ‘we’, Tonto”. Still, the minister can say the Taoiseach was on the side of the reserve.

Interesting, too, that the minister should invoke the will of the Oireachtas rather than the will of the people because he knows full well that the people want a full-time garda force and never voted for part-time policemen.

Had he suggested before the last election that instead of 2,000 full-time members, we would get 4,000 butchers, bakers and candlestick-makers, he might well not be back in his exceptionally well-paid job.