Gambling our future - We’ve made the bet of our lives

NOT even the great, soul-filling genius of Samuel Beckett or Flann O’Brien, our great champions of tragedy and irony, could have imagined a more appropriate symmetry.

The greatest bet in the history of this Republic — the launch of NAMA — was made just as the Galway Races were reaching a climax of sorts on Ladies’ Day. This represents the kind of black humour that even Beckett and O’Brien, at their dead-pan, dead-eyed best, could only aspire to.

God only knows who could match the kind of black humour that saw Taoiseach Brian Cowen enjoying the Ballybrit jamboree — almost €20 million bet at the course this week — while Finance Minister Brian Lenihan was back at the office launching the lifeboats.