+353 1 618 3014
I RARELY meet bank directors these days. David Duffy, the 10- grand-a-week boss at AIB refuses to return my calls. I spot distant Bank of Ireland directors, like Richie Boucher, high on the platform at their AGMs.
I used to bump into Anglo chairman Alan Dukes in Leinster House – but he has not been so visible since he lost his sinecure.
Perhaps it is time for us all to chill out. Calm down a bit.
The euphoria in financial and political circles last week was overwhelming. The hype was mighty. First there were the rumours. Then the vacuum. Then the announcement of a late sitting of the Dáil for legislation.
WHICH of our noble financial hierarchy recently said: “Our position therefore is that there is no need for further recapitalisation”?
Financial regulator Paddy Neary? Fallen AIB chief Eugene Sheehy? Sean FitzPatrick?
Yes, indeed. They all asserted such nonsense, but back in 2008.
Patrick Neary’s famous quote was a paraphrase of today’s Government line: “I believe,” declared the unloved regulator, “the Irish banks are adequately, more than adequately, capitalised. . .”
Paddy Neary is alive and well in the corridors of power. So who echoed the same nonsense more recently?
THE scene: The annual cabinet New Year’s lunch in Government Buildings on Merrion Street, Dublin 2.
Michael Noonan: Terrible year, great lunch. Another brandy, Brendan? What’s planned for 2013?
Brendan Howlin: No brandy thanks — pass the morphine, Michael.
Michael: Morphine? Are you hallucinating, Howlin?
Brendan: Oh, I never told you. I had it stored, gallons of it, in the vaults here in Merrion Street. A little item of expenditure which I slipped past the mandarins. Our secret weapon for 2013.
Michael: Morphine? Why morphine?
SOMETHING about the mortgage crisis does not add up. While mortgage arrears are out of hand, repossessions are minute.
Indeed, last June some 83,250 mortgages were in arrears. At the same time, there were only 961 repossessions.
Quite a puzzle.
The low level of evictions must be thanks to those pussycats in the banks, the souls of human kindness.
The stand-off between borrower and lender is bizarre. No one is moving. The bankers seem paralysed while the homeowners are beginning to realise that there is safety in numbers. Not paying a mortgage is becoming normal, rather than rare.
Is there a quasi-mortgage strike developing? Even more intriguingly, is it being indulged by the Government?
As our lame leaders have thrown in the towel, let the people decide how much plutocrats should earn in future, writes Shane Ross
RICHARD Boyd Barrett TD had just finished his questions to Bank of Ireland boss, Richie Boucher. Exasperated, the socialist TD turned to me: “Now perhaps you know why we want to nationalise the banks.”
The Great Survivor of the banking implosion appeared before the Dail Finance Committee last Thursday. Even those of us who are hardened observers of bankers stonewalling questions were gobsmacked by the arrogance of the bruiser from Zambia.
THE scene: AIB HQ Bank Centre, Ballsbridge. In the boardroom, taking a telephone call, is former Labour Party leader and AIB ‘Public Interest’ director Dick Spring. On the line is Labour Party leader Eamon Gilmore.
Eamon: “Morning, Dick.”
Dick: “Hi there, Eamon. I was about to ring you. What a terrible week you had with that wretch Roisin. Reminds me of the days when the old Left and the unions were giving me grief.
“I wanted to warn you not to back Dr Reilly. I never trusted a man with a beard, even Ruairi. David Begg and Jack O’Connor have the country ruined. The bearded brethren made my life hell when I was leader. And now you turn up backing a Fine Gael man with a red beard. I thought you had more sense.”
Eamon: “That is not why I rang, Dick. I wondered . . .”
One of the last measures to pass through the Dail before the summer recess was supposedly aimed at helping citizens in debt. We had waited a long time for the wise men among the mandarins to defuse the next banking time bomb.
Bankrupts were now to live in a more lenient regime. Homeowners in debt were destined to be released from bondage. Committees galore, expert groups comprising a lethal cocktail of bankers by the bucketful, civil servants and accountants had struggled with the problem.
On the night that the dreaded Personal Insolvency Bill was passed, most of the bankrupts could be counted sitting smugly on the government benches. They were bankrupt of ideas, bankrupt of solutions, bankrupt of interest in the subject. They simply wanted to pass the problem on to the various discredited institutions and individuals entrusted with sorting out Ireland’s increasingly impoverished middle class.
IT was one of those defining moments. I gasped when I heard the news. AIB, the barely breathing corpse of Irish banking, had seen the light. The board of the zombie bank had suffered a deathbed repentance. The country could yet be saved.
Last week, the news seeped through that AIB had appointed Thomas Foley to the board. I used to know Thomas Foley a little. The former US ambassador to Ireland was an ideal choice. He carried none of the normal, but fatally flawed, banking baggage borne by other nominees to Ireland’s bank boards.
AIB desperately needed an energetic American, an outsider with a business pedigree. Foley had been respected and popular during his short stint at the US embassy here. In 2009, he had returned to the US and got married.
We thought that his return home would be the last we would see of the US businessman. But no, AIB had done a good day’s work by enticing him back.
