Time to ditch our Tammany Hall mindset

TERRY Prone writes about building a new era out to the wreckage of the old, how the present financial disaster could be transformed into an opportunity for Ireland (Irish Examiner, April 6).

Unfortunately, Ms Prone is herself still living in the past as demonstrated by her predictably Irish attitude to obeying the law: “Just as the mantra, during the boom years, was ‘You hafta have a laugh’ the current mantra is ‘you hafta survive’, and if that means breaking a few rules set by a bunch of legislators currently held in pretty universal contempt as overpaid, unrealistic and culpable, then those rules are going to be broken.”

Our country is on the brink of disaster because the vast majority of citizens including politicians, regulators and the business sector believed that Ireland, unique among Western countries, could build a stable and progressive democracy while at the same time treating the rule of law as an inconvenience.