Ethical vacuum - Unfinished business at the banks

IF five years ago — after the Dermot Weld-trained Ansar became the first horse in a decade to retain the Galway Plate — you were to suggest in a buzzing, self-congratulating Ballybrit tent, that Seán FitzPatrick would declare himself a bankrupt, your host might have asked why you bothered to get out of bed in the morning.

He might also, inappropriately, but very revealingly, have wondered how you can live with yourself; why you don’t put an end to your pessimism in the most irreversible way.

Yet, if the script plays out as is expected, the disgraced former Anglo Irish boss, who has come to epitomise the greedy, reckless, privateering facilitated by light-touch regulation that has set this country back decades, will file a petition — cost €650 — to the courts today asking to be declared a bankrupt.