Banking inquiry is just a game of cat-and-mouse with no winners

“It’s unlikely that his testimony has changed many minds that have long been made up about his role in these matters.”

Perhaps the understatement of the decade from Michael Clifford (Irish Examiner, June 3), as he struggles hard to seek out some authenticity in Brian Cowen’s tales at the banking enquiry — that magic land of self-exoneration, where villains can be saints and guilt swept away by brazen ‘brush-blasts’ of bombast and polemic-powered invective.

After all, the Dáil committee members tasked with elucidating some truths is really a mirage of modern-day fable and yesteryear lore. Who needs a Greek tragi-comedy, ancient or modern, when we have our own vibrant ‘national’ theatre, generously funded from the public purse, and covered by every media outlet in the land.

It’s a sumptuous production of a real-life Tom & Jerry cartoon, where the current ‘cats’ of political enthronement chase after the well-heeled mice of old ‘glory’, as they dance around the skirting boards of history.

No time for a genuine sorry — this is a serious game of thrones, with ‘reputations’ at stake. Not for the faint-hearted or the squeamish is this joust of ‘retro-justification’.

Cowen practised the oldest form of defence — attack, attack, attack. The tactic starts off with faux-contrition about the nation’s suffering and a diatribe about your noble tenure running the state while making sure you don’t get caught in any recrimination.

“It wasn’t me, your honour, it was all those other advisor ‘shysters’, and those global bankers.”

Charlie McCreevy, a political horse of similar, though dappled colour, gave his grandstanding performance of playful disrespect, the day previous.

No-one buys any of it, of course, and why should they?

Shooting oneself in the foot is for wimps, sack-cloths for losers. Pensions and sinecures rule.

Jim Cosgrove

Chapel Street

Lismore

Co Waterford