This country for too long has been exploited by the untouchable few

‘Nexus’ is an extraordinarily good name for the current banking probe.

For years, there existed a cabal of politicians, hucksters and shysters, heavily seasoned with a good dash of megalomaniac clerics, who ran this country into the ground.

Go back to the start of self-government and we find that semi-state bodies were set up because no-one else could afford to build the infrastructure. Brilliant idea.

But it was then stuffed with the friends and supporters of political parties.

These people then appointed their own friends and supporters to the company, and so on down the line.

This process applied to every state agency. Any time tenders were offered for any work, the same system was used and abused.

Eventually, we arrive at where we are now, where the situation resembles not so much a stinking morass, as a ball of wax; the good cannot be distinguished from the bad, nor right from wrong.

The wheel has now turned full circle, but with one vital difference; we are now told that the Government cannot afford to either refurbish or rebuild any of the architecture or infrastructure, and so it can only be done by the ‘private sector’.

From the amount of state assets that were sold off from hotels and banks to Posts & Telegraphs, for ‘better efficiencies’, only for them to prove even more expensive for the customer (aka, the taxpayer) than the original entities, we know that this argument doesn’t hold water.

Furthermore, the price to be paid to exploit new opportunities has resulted in entire swatches of the natural resources of Ireland being given free to private, global companies to compensate them for the set-up costs.

You don’t believe me?

Well, try the total gas and offshore oil reserves, worth trillions, for a start.

Or how about the company that holds a million acres of land — Coillte — that came within a hair’s breadth of being sold to the Chinese?

In tandem with all this, we have toothless inquiries in which the guilty only go unpunished.

Are ye beginning to see the pattern, yet?

Liam Power

14 Srahanarry

Bangor Erris

Ballina

Co. Mayo