Anglo tapes prove we need proper inquiry into banking fiasco

SPEAKING on RTÉ radio recently, a farmer, summing up a dismal year, sadly muttered: “the slugs got the better of us” — a fitting epitaph, if ever there was one, for Anglo Irish Bank.

We have all long suspected that bankers, whose incompetence and avarice cost us our national sovereignty, have been laughing at us.

The Anglo tapes — replete with chuckles, chortles, cackles and guffaws — confirm that suspicion in spades. The recordings, of phone calls between Anglo execs in late 2008, have done more to underscore the causes of our current penury than any article, speech, report or half-baked inquiry in the past five years.