Politicians, not bankers, brought Ireland down

I hope the acquittal of Sean Fitzpatrick will be the first step in debunking the ‘wisdom’ that bad bankers broke Ireland.

The bankers were incompetent, and unwise in the scale of their lending, but they did what bankers have always done — they lent money to feed demand, on the reasonable expectation that the borrower understood he had to pay it back.

In this case, the borrowers were a cabal of monopoly-playing developers, drunk on the affections of the ruling political party.

The culprits in Ireland’s collapse were the politicians elected to run it, but who didn’t.

They created the conditions for unsustainable housing and property development, by opening the country’s borders to a mass influx of peoples from new, EU accession states in the east.

The mantra was that by being good, welcoming Europeans we were all going to get rich via population growth and housing to match it.

In fairness, the leader of the Labour Party did question the wisdom of not operating a derogation to which we were entitled. ! One national politician, the late Brian Lenihan, was honest enough to put the cause of our crash succinctly: “cheap credit from the European Central Bank (and) the availability of cheap labour after 2004 was a factor”.

Be it Magdalen laundries, Kerry babies, Ian Bailey, or whatever — the truth will eventually out, but only if there is media prepared to give it air.

Ted Neville

Douglas

Co Cork