High price of a weak financial regulator

THE fallout from the end of the trial of the Anglo Irish bankers has spoken volumes. Now that little matter is out of the way, the wheels of justice, we are assured, will grind a little faster.

A banking inquiry by an Oireachtas committee will finally apportion blame for the mother of all recessions. It will be, to use a favoured Shinner term, “a truth recovery process”.

First in the stocks is expected to be Pat Neary, the hapless former head of the Financial Regulator, who had some shocking memory lapses while giving evidence. Now that Sean Fitzpatrick was found not guilty of proffering illegal loans, and his former colleagues, Pat Whelan and Willie McAteer, are not going to jail, the focus can move onto Neary.