Irish guilt about the crash is post-colonial shame

David Begg has stooped to a new low in the Irish post-colonial mentality. He writes that if the Vikings had won at Clontarf, Ireland would be better-run today! (Irish Examiner Books, April 30).

Like Jim Power and Brian Hayes, he repeats the falsehood that the country was badly run before the crisis. “We did not assimilate the need for the constant discipline required by membership of a currency union.”

Is minic sia a théann an bhreág ná an fhírinne (It’s often a lie travels further than the truth).

Professor William Black told the banking inquiry that unsubordinated debt “should never, ever be bailed out. No-one ever did that before. You Irish are the only ones who blame yourselves for the crisis.”

Michael O’Flynn

7 Loretto Park

Friars Walk

Cork