Diarmaid Ferriter: In years to come, will those writing the history of
Ireland in the first decade of the 21st Century see the Anglo Tapes
revelations as something of a watershed? It is likely that the
sentiments and attitudes exposed in the taped conversations will provide
historians with a useful example of the dangerous consequences of
excess, bravado and contempt for standards and public service that have
been one of the hallmarks of Ireland's crisis.
The tapes provide, in great detail, one of the contrasts that
historians can build much around – in this case, the great gulf between
Ireland's Celtic Tiger elite and those below who had to pay for the
consequences of their greed. In the chapter entitled 'Boom to Bust',
historians will document the extremes that were experienced in the
decade.
Key moments and decisions will undoubtedly be included;
the decision in September 2008 to announce the bank guarantee; the
extent of the pressure that was put on Ireland by the European Central
Bank not to allow any Irish bank to collapse; the humiliating arrival of
the IMF and its bailout partners in November 2010; the consequent loss
of Irish sovereignty and, of course, the collapse of support for Fianna
Fail – historically one of the most successful political parties in the
world – in February 2011.
Interestingly, the only Fianna Fail TD
who survived the party's routing in Dublin in 2011 was the late Brian
Lenihan. Whatever his faults and the disastrous mistakes he made as
Minister for Finance at the time of the crisis, people found in him, his
attitude to his illness and determination to carry on, a dignity and a
sense of public service that was obviously missing in so many others.
In
interviews given shortly before he died, Lenihan described a moment in
time that historians in the future may find illuminating: "I've a very
vivid memory of going to Brussels on the final Monday to sign the
agreement (about the bailout) and being on my own at the airport and
looking at the snow gradually thawing and thinking to myself, this is
terrible. No Irish minister has ever had to do this before."
Whatever
about the self-serving nature of some of the comments of Lenihan and
his colleagues, it is a powerful image. Contrast that with the attitude
of the Anglo bankers as they interrupted their quaffing of Merlot to
joke about the bank guarantee, or with what another Fianna Fail finance
minister, Charlie McCreevy, said in New York in 2005: "As finance
minister in Ireland I saw what great entrepreneurial energies a
light-touch regulatory system can unleash". In that same year, 'The New
York Times' noted, caustically, that the "light hand" of corporate
regulation made Dublin "the wild west of European finance".
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