THE NATION’S VOICE

A minister said the Dáil banking inquiry would be compelling for the public. Bread and circuses indeed

I was taken aback with the reaction to the Anglo Irish convictions and non sentences of the two men found guilty of 10 breaches of the Companies Act a week ago. The biggest surprise to me is how unrelentingly angry decent people are – and how hard they have become. Person after person spoke to called for Pat Whelan and Willie McAteer to be sent to prison forthwith .

Others spoke of actually feeling physically unwell as they listened to the evidence and outcome of the trial as they contemplated the misery visited on them, their children and grandchildren by casino banks, reckless bankers and dumb regulators.

We are told that the two convicted bankers will be assessed for suitability to do community service, which will see them spend a small amount of time helping out in community projects such as cleaning graveyards.

Unfortunately there are too many people now buried in Irish graveyards because of the stress of the economic catastrophe visited on them over the past six years.

That unending bad news has turned many people sour, angry and stony-hearted.

W.B. Yeats was right when he wrote: ‘Too long a sacrifice makes a stone of the heart.’

This week, on top of the Anglo Irish verdicts, we had the May Day increase in the discretionary carbon tax, with savage increases in the price of coal, briquettes and kerosene. The Government could have stopped this but made a decision not to.

Then there is the continuing Punch and Judy show about water charges. We know some solution will be magicked up but be clear, it’s the squeezed middle who will take the brunt of this new tax, yet again. It’s the PAYE worker, the easy target, who will get it in the neck, prompting many to ask: Where is the motivation to go to work?

It’s a real dilemma for many now and needs to be addressed.

The Government response to the Anglo Irish verdict is to announce a televised banking inquiry where 15 TDs and senators will ‘interrogate’ key players in their tiered committee room in Leinster House.

A minister even went as far as to promise that the event would be ‘compelling’ for the public. Bread and circuses indeed. But if the retired and golden-pensioned Financial Regulator can sit in a court of law and, in 82 different ways, plead that he can’t remember what happened, then how will a televised interview with 15 politicians jog his memory?

The Government even seem baffled at the negative response to the perfectly pro- gressive idea of free GP care for every child under six. But one of the reasons decent people are sceptical is that so many people in medical need are losing their discretionary medical card. For more than a year now on Liveline, we have been listening to genuine examples of distress and hurt because of this debacle – which Fine Gael TDs this week admitted was now their biggest issue in constituency clinics .

People need to dream again, but first the Government has to wake up to how grievously people have been hurt over the past six years.