Examiner View: Seán FitzPatrick: Forever linked to Ireland's implosion

Former Anglo Irish Bank chairman Sean Fitzpatrick. His death is a tragedy for his family, but he leaves a legacy that will be tied to people's suffering.

On  May 23, 2017, a beaming Seán FitzPatrick left Dublin’s Circuit Criminal Court and addressed reporters and photographers outside. It was, he said, a “wonderful day”.

The former Anglo boss had just seen his latest trial, which ran for 126 days, collapse, more than four years after he had been arrested and charged.

Then leader of the opposition Fianna Fáil, Micheál Martin bemoaned that the State’s capacity to investigate white-collar crime had been shown to be inept”. This newspaper described the investigation by the office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement as a “persecution” rather than a prosecution, given it had been found to be inherently biased.

But the acquittal remains a footnote in a legacy that was battered and tarnished.

Mr FitzPatrick’s actions and those of his peers, the trials, the bailout crisis, and the ensuing chaos shaped this country’s modern history more than any other event of the last 20 years and they continue to resonate today in anti-austerity sentiment around the bill for Covid-19.

Anglo was at the epicentre of the property-fuelled crisis which rocked the Irish state in 2008, leading it into a prolonged spell of deeply painful austerity.

FitzPatrick as its head was lionised by his shareholders and his cheerleaders. But it was a mirage.

For all of his risk-taking, talent, and charisma; characteristics that were envied and replicated in other financial institutions, FitzPatrick’s own personal demise into bankruptcy in 2010 mirrored the tragedy which befell the country.

He became the personal embodiment of the greed and avarice which prevailed in the upper echelons of Irish society and that ultimately caused the crash.

Championed by his supporters, detested by the public, FitzPatrick’s double acquittal for his dubious banking practices did not erase the stain of his errors.

The 2019 expulsion from membership of Chartered Accountants Ireland which saw him fined €25,000 was the final indignity he had to suffer. Following the trials, he largely withdrew from public life.

His death at 73 is a tragedy for his family, but the legacy of the public Sean FitzPatrick is one that will forever be tied to peoples’ suffering and Ireland’s implosion at the time.