The bluffing game is up for stonewall Cowen and see-saw Lenihan

SO the Greeks are bearing gifts to our shores. Well, obviously not the Greeks but everyone else in Europe is to give us the digout we don’t really need or want.

Again, the Government has behaved disgracefully by keeping people in the dark and forcing them to depend on foreign briefings by EU personnel to hear the truth.

That Brian Cowen should defend his position on the basis of wanting to keep his cards close in the interests of the country is just a measure of how gullible this Government considers the electorate. The gentlemen in suits are not in town to play poker with Cowen, but if they were to pass the time with a hand of cards, Beggar My Neighbour might be a more apt choice.

No, the only game open to Brian Cowen now is to place all cards face up on the table, stand back and wait for the IMF/EU delegations to react. Obviously, Olli Rehn didn’t like what he saw last week so he upped the ante and is sending in the big hitters. Cowen is not in a negotiating place and equivocal affirmation from Rehn and others fool no one. Perhaps the Taoiseach can plea bargain. He might even try blackmail as Ireland’s response, in theory at least, could drag the whole European fiscal edifice crashing down. To do that after all we have taken from the European coffers since we joined the EU would require, on the one hand, a courage this Government has shown thus far to lack but, on the other hand, a dastardliness which they have in spades. Cowen’s stonewalling has long had its day.

Brian Lenihan’s verbal see-sawing and oily bluster is the kind of thing that cuts mustard down in the Four Courts but it has had its day with even the most gullible among us.

We wait now to hear how the “cheapest bank bailout in history” will morph into the “cheapest national bailout in history”. Hopefully, the next election will end to this Government’s tiresome ride around economic wonderland with its endless, illusory corners.

Margaret Hickey

Castleowen

Blarney

Co Cork