We’re all at sea because of the cliquish ‘powers that be’

WE demonise as ‘sharks’ the greedy financial fools who laid this country so low, but that is to credit them with too much cunning and glamour — they were just dolphins on the make.

With respect to Fungie, an unpleasant aspect of dolphin society has exposed the ugly side of the mild-mannered mammal.

Researchers have discovered that dolphins are the only non-human mammals to indulge in elite societies — and they love self-serving cliques. The inter-locking, back-slapping, deal-doing cliques of the Irish financial collapse have still to be fully exposed, but there amidst the ‘elite’ was Seán Quinn, a man so delusional, or devious, he believes he did little wrong.

This, despite his dysfunctional insurance empire serving the State up with a debt of €1.65bn after it was put into administration. Administrators cannot yet give a final tally to the taxpayer as every time they “peel another layer of the onion” back, a new level of decay emerges.

That onion-peeling has caused Quinn to shed tears, but they are tears for himself, not for us.

We will all pay for Quinn’s incompetence and greed for at least another quarter of a century, with a 2% levy imposed on all insurance customers to pick up the liability tag.

Quinn said the liability figure was “truly shocking”, as he again insisted the insurance firm should never have been placed in administration — despite all the evidence pointing to administration, it was left to the new regulator Matthew Elderfield to take the necessary action from which his predecessors had strangely shied away.

Quinn’s greed in borrowing €2.3bn from Anglo Irish to invest in the bank’s shares, the mess of his insurance firm’s push into the British market, and the allegations he has moved assets out of the reach of his creditors, show a man with pretensions of being a killer financial shark, but exposed as an over-ambitious, self-deluding dolphin. Indeed, the administrators firmly lay the blame for the mess on: “Years of mismanagement, and insufficient internal controls” within Quinn Insurance.

It seems Ireland’s financial system was infested by a school of self-obsessed dolphins over the past 20 years or so.

Which brings us to the intriguing new research about those mammals formerly seen as the gentlemen of the sea.

The Daily Telegraph reported that wild bottlenose dolphins bond because of their use of tools, with cliques and classes forming over decades as a result of their skills.

These communities, which have been compared with closed elites among humans, mean the aquatic mammals share their knowledge only with others in their own circle — and pass it down the family line, scientists learned.

This trait of “inclusive inheritability” and culture had previously been thought only to belong to humans.

Georgetown University researchers watching wild dolphins in Shark Bay, Australia, used hunting tools as a marker of dolphin societal habits.

They observed that some dolphins used a sponge to protect their beaks while hunting, and the researchers were curious to know why the practice had not spread further.

The scientists discovered the highly useful tool had first been used by a lone dolphin, whom they nicknamed ‘Sponging Eve’, after she scraped her nose while foraging for food in rough sand.

To get around the obstacle, she broke off a piece of sea sponge to protect herself — and then taught the skill to her offspring.

However, despite two decades having passed, knowledge of how to manipulate the tool had not spread to the rest of the dolphin community.

Researchers noted 36 spongers and 69 non-spongers in the area over a 22-year period, taking note of their relationships.

They discovered in their findings that: “Spongers were more cliquish, had more sponger associates and stronger bonds with each other than with non-spongers.

“Like humans who preferentially associate with others who share their subculture, tool-using dolphins prefer others like themselves, strongly suggesting that sponge tool-use is a cultural behaviour.”

Writing in the Nature Communications scientific journal, a team led by Janet Mann believe the cliques are formed for social reasons rather than practical, saying: “As sponging is a solitary behaviour, affiliation between spongers would not be based on collective foraging, but rather on identifying other individuals as spongers.”

“We suggest that spongers also share in-group identity, but affiliation is a consequence of similarity in the socially learned trait, a scenario that resonates with human culture.”

Though in-group identity has been noted in other animals, from killer whales to budgies, dolphin sub-cultures are thought to be the result of socially-learned behaviour rather than innate traits.

‘Group identity’ and sponging off the rest of society were wild among the ‘great and the good’ of the boom, who acted as a cut-off clique, keeping certain tools and associations for themselves.

And still, thousands of people, with their demands of “justice for Quinn”, rally in support of the shamed, failed businessman whose mismanagement has landed the taxpayer with a €1.65bn-plus bill — and he has even gained support among elected representatives of Sinn Féin and Fine Gael.

I, too, would like to see “justice for Quinn”, but I fear it would be justice of a very different sort to that envisaged by his defenders.

Quinn even has the nerve to bleat about his children being “put on the dole” — are they, really?

Can his son cash a giro in prison?

It must be awful for those poor children, struggling by on €188 a week.

Oh, but hang on? Were the family not awarded ‘expenses’ of more than €30,000 a month by a judge? With poor, imprisoned Seán Jnr granted €5,000, and his wife, Karen Woods, some €2,895? Not to mention the €2.8m that the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC) told the High Court had been paid to members of the Quinn family last year through a Russian company, IPG.

Yes, how the 460,323 people on the live register must feel sympathy for such appalling treatment.

As a debt-crushed, failed economic State, we don’t even have the dignity of saying we were sunk by killer sharks — in reality, we were done-over by greedy dolphins.

Fungie must be burying his shiny little head in shame.