THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SEAN FITZPATRICK

RTE News today reported that, just like his neighbours in one of Greystones’s leading restaurants, the professional colleagues of Sean Fitzpatrick, the disgraced former Anglo-Irish Bank Chairman, did not hold the former banker and financier in the same high regard as at least one Circuit Court judge. The Irish Association of Chartered Accountants expelled Sean Fitzpatrick from membership of their professional body for conduct which had brought the profession into disrepute. In contrast, a Circuit Court Judge, in dismissing all charges against Sean Fitzpatrick, had thanked him for “his services to the Nation”. The same Judge also took the opportunity of sentencing a number of Fitzpatrick’s subordinates to jail, a very Irish example of everyone being equal before the Law. One of the people sentenced was an old lady who, having worked all her life, was looking forward to her retirement. The Judge’s sentence terrified and petrified the old lady whose only fault, if fault it was, was that she was acting upon and carrying out her superior’s orders. The verdict brought to mind the extremely unsavoury occasion when Bertie Ahern and Celia Larkin chose to send a little grey-haired old lady to face the music before the Judge in their place. It is as good an example of abuse of power as you will find. Mention of Bertie Ahern is entirely pertinent, relevant and germane to the Sean Fitzpatrick story. Sean’s Anglo-Irish Bank wasn’t so much a Bank as a corruption and slush fund in perpetual motion. Its principal weapon was its willingness and ability to generate a property bubble, relying on the traditional and illogical desire of Irish people to own their own homes at any cost and in the full knowledge that neither the Irish Times or the Irish Independent would ever shout “Stop”. Like most “bubbles”, Fitzpatrick’s bubble was a success to begin with. The so-called “boom” which initially resulted from this success, together with the massive windfall in  Stamp duty which it brought the Exchequer, lay the groundwork for and contributed hugely to Bertie’s three General Election victories. Sean Fitzpatrick’s profoundly dishonest, if ostensibly successful, approach to finance, borrowing and lending, centred on the property market, but extending into every other facet of the Irish economy, appeared so effective and so profitable, that the virus and the accompanying “bonus culture soon infected Ireland’s two traditional lenders and established banks, which had previously built, developed and acquired a deserved reputation for financial good sense, prudence and trustworthiness, namely Bank of Ireland and Allied Irish Banks. Soon, not one, but three of Ireland’s banks and financial institutions were heading at ever increasing speed towards disaster, despite the financial and legal fact that banking and the property markets are the subjects of constant monitoring, tight legal supervision and stringent regulation. Most unfortunately, the then Minister for Finance, the Department of Finance and the Central Bank all failed completely to discharge their constitutional and statutory duties and to fulfil their legal obligations to the Irish people. Inevitably, such criminal negligence and wilful neglect had the most predictably disastrous consequences for house-buyers, mortgage-holders and borrowers in general. They also brought the Irish economy, and eventually Ireland itself, as a Sovereign State, to the edge of the abyss and eventually beyond the point of no return down into a bottomless and catastrophic black hole populated by foreign debt, creditors, speculators, debt collectors and debt collecting agencies. Most commentators are not stupid, so it follows that most writers, journalists and economists either knew or had a pretty good idea as to what was going on; but very few commentators had the courage or foresight to call a spade a spade. Sean Fitzpatrick himself did not have limitless amounts of money required to oil, grease and finance the destabilisation and degradation of Ireland as a whole and the destruction of Ireland as a Sovereign State in which he was so deeply engaged, But Germany, former or not so former Nazi Germany, had. The Third (or arguably by now) the Fourth Reich received unstinting support in these efforts from collaborationist France and the so-called European Union. In these The decision by just three men (Bertie Ahern, the then Taoiseach, his Finance Minister and his Minister for Foreign Affairs) that Ireland should abandon its own sovereign national currency and adopt the “euro” and enter the Eurozone was not just totally illegal and unconstitutional, it left Ireland and the Irish economy completely at the mercy of the European Commission and the European Central Bank – for all practical purposes at the mercy of Nazi Germany. (The situation is if anything much worse today). Sean Fitzpatrick, and indeed Bank of Ireland and Allied Irish Banks, funded the madness which was undermining and destroying Ireland with German and French money borrowed on the daily Interbank market where interest was charged at just 1% (a rate set not to suit Irish needs but to kick start the sluggish German and French economies). Far from advising or encouraging prudence or caution, the Commission, the European Central Bank and the large German and French banks dangled the prospect of cheap easy money before the gullible Irish banks, financial institutions and, ultimately, poor ordinary Irish families and households who in their quest for a coveted property were literally selling their lives away. The reader may think that all this is ancient History. It is not. The Civic Guards and the Director of Public Prosecutions know who all the people responsible are and where they reside, Former Office holders and Members of the Government at the material time should be prosecuted for Treason before the Criminal Courts of Justice. The Banking Inquiry was only of a procedural nature and was, in any event, rendered utterly useless by the amount of false information and Perjury provided. It is very important that justice be done and be seen to be done, but it is even more important that Bank of Ireland and Allied Irish Banks settle their debts, In the past year alone, the two banks have left the Irish people and the Irish tax-payer pay 66 billion euros (yes, 66 billion euros) towards the cost of the debts accumulated during the so-called Celtic Tiger. That money does not belong to bonus-chasing banks and bankers, the money belongs to ordinary Irish people and families who need it to fund and maintain schools, houses, hospitals, churches, sports facilities and to provide for all those in need of food and shelter.  

Maurice James, Barrister at Law, United Nations Counsel