WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A STOCK BROKER AND A HORSE TRAINER?
The steeped-in-greed organised stockbrocker scheme needs to be publicly examined,
EARLY last week, I was pretty angry about the photo of that eejit sitting on the dead horse. Horsey people kept saying what matters is how Gordon Elliott’s behaviour gives the racing business a bad name. That is not what matters.
What matters is that the act, in itself, was distasteful and disrespectful.
And, let me admit — I’m prejudiced against horsey people. Too many yahoo types.
Then we heard about stockbrokers J&E
€4m because 16 of its stockbrokers — well, let’s just say it was another inspiring tale of rich folk striving to get richer.
I’ve just read a Central Bank explanation of what allegedly happened. I think I’ll have to read it at least twice more to grasp exactly what these folk were up to. It’s an inspiring tale indeed of how one might hope to better oneself in certain circumstances.
Unfortunately, from now on, when I walk past Davy’s offices in Dawson Street I doubt if I’ll be able to stop my hand fastening protectively around my wallet.
So, between the dead horse guy and the rich stockbrokers, it was a pretty disturbing week.
There was an upside. The anger took my mind off the fact that this Government is almost as good at organising a Covid vaccine delivery as it is at building a children’s hospital.
And then, as the week unwound, there was the problem of Darragh O’Brien.
Yeah, I hear you: “Who’s Darragh O’Brien”?
Darragh, according to reliable sources, is our Housing Minister.
Darragh is also sometimes mentioned as a possible replacement for Micheál Martin as leader of Fianna Fáil. Are they really so desperate?
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, there was no getting away from Darragh. If he wasn’t being interviewed, he was fighting his corner in a Dáil debate, and then he was announcing things, most of which had already been announced.
And, every time I heard Darragh speak, my confidence in the future took a hiding.
To make it worse, Paschal Donohoe was in the Dáil, too, dodging questions.
When I was done reading the transcripts of the Dáil debates, I sat in a corner for a while, trying to decide if I should open a bottle of wine or just have a good cry.
I began to wonder why
I’d been so angry about
Dead Horse Guy.
Yes, that photo was distasteful, disrespectful — but no one was hurt, no one at all — human or animal.
Gordon Elliott didn’t kill the horse, we heard no evidence of cruelty, he didn’t make a fake apology. And he didn’t benefit from what he did. It was a momentary lapse.
Of all the things I could have got angry about — why that? These are trying times. We’re doing our best.
The real punishment for Elliot is knowing that, whatever his triumphs as a trainer, for the rest of his life (and beyond) he’ll always be Dead Horse Guy.
The J&E Davy stockbroker scheme — that’s something else — big bucks. Someone seems to have benefited, it seems to have been carefully organised, steeped in greed.
How it worked, who got what, what information was withheld from the client
— all of it needs to be laid out and publicly examined. This company has a role in handling public money.
The individuals involved weren’t fined, the company paid the fine.
This whole controversy needs to be outlined publicly — exactly who did what and why, who and where those people are and why we shouldn’t believe something similar is going on right now.
Without that disclosure, only a fool would ever again trust those involved.
(And please, no executives sobbing to Tubs or to Miriam about how “that’s not who we are”. That’s exactly who you are.)
The younger among us may wonder what that peculiar smell is, wafting from the political stage. It’s the smell of the 1980s, the days when Fianna Fáil were boldly, blatantly right up the backsides of the wealthy, asking if there was anything more they could do to help?
And Fine Gael simmered — not in anger, but in envy that they hadn’t managed to pull off that trick.
They did, eventually.
The Dáil last week discussed Darragh O’Brien’s housing plans. And it discussed banking, with some reference to the Central Bank’s role in the Davy controversy.
The housing debate began with Eoin Ó Broin of Sinn Féin claiming the “shared equity” element is discredited. It will help only developers, he claimed, it’s based on a UK plan that caused a significant increase in house prices.
Ó Broin didn’t just assert — he laid out evidence of the claimed flaws in the plan — it was impressive.
Darragh O’Brien responded with a charge that Sinn Féin is obsessed with “Trump-style hysteria”. Sinn Féin is all about “manufacturing problems but not in providing solutions”.
Abuse of this kind was not in short supply.
There was some positive news in the matter of the housing crisis — Darragh said he will “leave no stone unturned”. I’m trying, really trying, to be impressed.
Is Darragh’s bluster an improvement on the days when Fine Gael’s Eoghan Murphy was Housing Minister, showing up everywhere in his hard hat and hi-viz jacket?
Different ways of being irrelevant to the problem.
Paschal Donohoe, Minister for Finance, was — let’s just say he was present, during the banking debate. He was in the chamber. What value he was to the Dáil, to us — that’s something else.
Not unreasonably, Róisín Shortall of the Social Democrats asked Mr Donohoe six concise questions concerning the Davy business.
Mr Donohoe wouldn’t answer. That was for the Central Bank to answer, he said. And the Central Bank will next week appear before the Oireachtas Finance Committee.
Ms Shortall can ask the questions then, he said.
Funnily enough, John McGuinness of Fianna
Fáil — an experienced TD who knows well how such committees work — had already told the Dáil what to expect. The Central Bank, he said, “will tell us that, according to legislation, they cannot answer questions in regard to Davy”.
So, Mr Donohoe can’t answer Ms Shortall’s questions, because that’s the Central Bank’s job.
But the Central Bank can’t answer those questions, because of “legislation”.
And who is in charge of that legislation? You know the answer to that one, right?
Oh, think about it for a minute — it’ll come to you... Yeah, no kidding, it’s the Minister for Finance, Paschal Donohoe.
For years, some of us have argued that the Dáil is effectively dead as a parliament, rubber-stamping
Cabinet decisions. This is facilitated by an electorate that elects good “constituency” TDs who grovel to the ministers, who in turn provide them with goodies for the constituency.
Such TDs have no interest in upholding the democracy of the parliament.
Voting for good “constituency” TDs is an anti-democratic act.
Meanwhile, the Central Bank has given an account of what it believes happened, the wording of which...
Well, it seems while some enterprising folks were pursuing “a personal investment opportunity... the rules in place in relation to personal account dealing were easily sidestepped”.
Furthermore, when this spilled into the public domain, “Davy failed to disclose the full extent of the wrongdoing. This lack of candour was treated as an aggravating factor in this case”.
Questionable dealing, rules easily side-stepped, “lack of candour” — Ms Shortall will no doubt note this amusing choice of words.
‘There’s a distinct whiff of the 1980s in the air when FF were blatantly up the backsides of the wealthy’