The 10 most culpable

liammur

Imo the 10 most culpable for ruining our state:

1. B Ahern
2. Finance ministers: C McCreevy & Cowen
3. Rest of senior cabinet (Martin/Harney/O Dea/Ahern etc)
4. S FitzPatrick
5. Drumm/Fingleton
6. Sheehy/Goggin
7. Reckless developers
8. Electorate
9. Unions
10. Media

Surely our politicians and bankers should have to pay some price ?

We have to learn from our mistakes, and 1 clear way is to make economics compulsory on the school curriculum.
Another way surely must involve our politicians having either business experience or qualifications. I can think of no profession where anyone can take up a job with no qualifications.

bonzos

Patrick Neary should be top of that list,another example of a civil servant who got rewarded for not doing his job.......He should be behind bars!A total disgrace:mad:mad:If he had done the job that the taxpayer paid him for seanie and co would never have gotten out of control!

liammur

bonzos wrote: »

Patrick Neary should be top of that list,another example of a civil servant who got rewarded for not doing his job.......He should be behind bars!A total disgrace:mad:mad:If he had done the job that the taxpayer paid him for seanie and co would never have gotten out of control!

Yes, you are correct. I forgot about him. Was he just another pawn obeying b ahern ? (his pay off seems suspicious)

peasant

I would put the electorate in spot number four or possibly even first.

You will always get "businessmen" and institutions who will milk the system for all it's got ...it's the job of governement not to let them and the job of the electorate to choose politicians capable to do just that.

Therefore I think the failure of the electorate has to rank higher than it does in your list.

unit 1

liammur wrote: »

Yes, you are correct. I forgot about him. Was he just another pawn obeying b ahern ? (his pay off seems suspicious)

I think many people are under the wrong impression about the former regulator. His "job" may have been to regulate the banks, but his "task" was to throw a blind eye, and he did this perfectly. People should remember exactly who appointed him, and not forget that we all know someone we can give a task to, in the certain knowledge that it will not be done.

bbbbb

Osama bin Laden.

Seriously. 911 happened shortly after the dot-com bomb, the US/world economy was at the top of the economic cycle in 2001, we were due a recession then. Instead we got 911 and the Fed/ECB reacted with cheap credit, so the terrorists wouldn't win. So instead we got an even greater bubble which took until the credit crunch to end...

Inquitus

I'd include an utterly useless and ineffective opposition on the list.

CDfm

The Health Service Unions for putting obstacles to change and efficiencies.

250% spending increases for nothing.

The straw that broke the camels back.

dixiefly

1. Mccreevy - I would go as far as saying that if Haughey had been in power he wouldnt have promoted this arrogant half wit into Finance where he tried to rewrite the laws of economics against best advice from Europe and a lot of this wouldnt have happened.

2. Bertie Aherne for putting McCreevy in finance and allowing him a free reign.

3. Brian Cowan for blindly continuing McCreevy's policies and never taking any control over / meeting with the Financial Reguator.

4. Regulator - patrick Neary for not regulating probably because he knew McCreevy & co didnt want him to.

5. brian Lenihan for not going with advice he paid a fortune for which said he should have let Anglo go to the wall.

6. P.D.'s for insisting on reduced taxes while at the same time supporting the boom in pubic spending.

7. Various bankers (Seanie Fitz/ Drumm/ Fingleton etc etc) for going totally against the rules of lending & probably engaging in criminal actions.

8. After that, the developers, public sector unions, electorate who voted FF in, people who bought at the height of the boom.

CDfm

peasant wrote: »

I would put the electorate in spot number four or possibly even first.

You will always get "businessmen" and institutions who will milk the system for all it's got ...it's the job of governement not to let them and the job of the electorate to choose politicians capable to do just that.

Therefore I think the failure of the electorate has to rank higher than it does in your list.

+ 1

Government spending fueled electorate demands.

The Corporate Estate also weilded huge power but no responsibility. Public Service, Unions, Lobby Groups -all unelected and all powerful.

bamboozle

1 Bertie Ahern for his 12 year spend spend spend fiasco
2 Bertie Ahern for his idiotic commitment to social partnership
3 Bertie Ahern for pressurising successive ministers for finance to release cash to pay for idiotic schemes bertie wanted implemented to keep various interest groups happy.
4 Bertie Ahern for his myopic focus on winning elections first and running the country second.
5 Cowan for failing to think or act independently as minister for Finance.
6 Patrick Neary for being asleep at the wheel for 100% of his time as financial regulator
7 Bertie, McCreevy et al for appointing a 'lifer' civil servant with no qualifications to the role of financial regulator (unless you call 1 year studying greek in UCD before dropping out a qualification)
8 PJ Mara and the FF 'machine' for creating the cosy relationship between big business and FF, Mara was well known for his dinner parties where vested interests and FF politicians sat side by side and came up with solutions to business people's problems...politicial donations ensued.
9 Bevery C,Flynn, Finian McGrath and Healy Rae for propping up this government for the last 2 years, as independents if they cared about the fiscal health of this country they would have withdrawn their support of govt a long time ago.
10 Sunday Independent/Eoghan Harris for the myopic support of FF and Bertie Ahern, suprise suprise Eoghan Harris the Sindo journalist was appointed to the Seanad by Bertie in 2007 following such great support by Harris and the Sindo to FF during that election.

Dorcha

Even though I didn't vote for any of the parties (I always vote Independent for a reason), I wouldn't blame the electorate at all. The low taxes benefited a lot of people, myself included, and it was the main reason FF kept getting elected and why a lot of people on the lower income voted for them.

So a little less of the self-flagellation.

karlth

Isn't blaming the politicians similar to blaming the law and the police for a burglary?

The bankers should surely be at the top the list? After all it are their debts and their bankruptcy?

Then the regulators and politicans?

BingoMingo

Does no one think that a good proportion of the general public who engaged in an orgy of reckless spending and debt accumulation with zero regard for the conseqences should be on this list?

People who loved to brag and boast at how much their houses cost. Shopping trips to New York. Holiday homes in Bulgaria. Plasma Tellies and decking. Weddings costing 60K. All paid on credit. All to out spend the guy next door.

A nation of people who for generations elected thugs, crooks and Mr. Fixits to government because we prefer chancers who got us a medical card or who sorted out a little legal problem we had to genuine men or women who want to better the lot of society on the whole.

A people who lined the streets to say goodbye to Charlie on the day of his State funeral and who could'nt have a minutes silence when the buried Tony Gregory a few weeks later.

We need to take responsibilty for the mess we have brought our country to. We need to grow up as a nation. Recognise the consequences of our actions and commit to not repeat these mistakes.

Then we can expect some NON gombeens to come forward to represent us!

mikemac

BingoMingo wrote: »

A people who lined the streets to say goodbye to Charlie on the day of his State funeral and who could'nt have a minutes silence when the buried Tony Gregory a few weeks later.

2006 and 2009,

irishh_bob

dixiefly wrote: »

1. Mccreevy - I would go as far as saying that if Haughey had been in power he wouldnt have promoted this arrogant half wit into Finance where he tried to rewrite the laws of economics against best advice from Europe and a lot of this wouldnt have happened.

2. Bertie Aherne for putting McCreevy in finance and allowing him a free reign.

3. Brian Cowan for blindly continuing McCreevy's policies and never taking any control over / meeting with the Financial Reguator.

4. Regulator - patrick Neary for not regulating probably because he knew McCreevy & co didnt want him to.

5. brian Lenihan for not going with advice he paid a fortune for which said he should have let Anglo go to the wall.

6. P.D.'s for insisting on reduced taxes while at the same time supporting the boom in pubic spending.

7. Various bankers (Seanie Fitz/ Drumm/ Fingleton etc etc) for going totally against the rules of lending & probably engaging in criminal actions.

8. After that, the developers, public sector unions, electorate who voted FF in, people who bought at the height of the boom.

i think mc reevy isnt in the same league as cowen or the chief architecht of our downfall bertie aherne , mcreevy ( due to his oppossition to berties rampant populist current spending ) was shipped off to europe after the 2004 euro elections , the property bubble only really went threw the stratosphere after that and while patrick neary took a five year nap during his time as regulator , i dont believe for a second that aherne had no influence on his lax attitude to wreckless banking

aherne wanted one thing , to remain in power and to buy as many votes from as many sectional interests ( unions etc ) as he could , to do this , he needed ****loads of revenue and the easiest way to maximise that revenue was by fueling the property boom via cheap easy available credit and of course thier were the various tax exemption section 23 schemes , cowen was a puppet of aherne from 2004 - 2008 and since 2008 has been ahernes fall guy , he was a usefull idiot and now hes a useless idiot , bertie aherne stands alone above anyone and anything in terms of the cause of our countrys collapse

let history never forget this glorified del boy

dixiefly

My problem with McCreevy is that he was the champion of the light regulation policy and had the "I have it so I'll spend it" mantra.

Of course Ahern, the Teflon Taoiseach is right up there as well. A waffler like him should never have been a minister let alone Taoiseach. His policies were buit around what was best for getting reelected not what was best for the country. The only slight mitigating factor for Bertie was that he was invoved in a lot of other stuff such as Northern Ireland. McCreevy and Cowen were Ministers For Finance and a lot of the blame has to rest with them.

bamboozle

dixiefly wrote: »

My problem with McCreevy is that he was the champion of the light regulation policy and had the "I have it so I'll spend it" mantra.

Of course Ahern, the Teflon Taoiseach is right up there as well. A waffler like him should never have been a minister let alone Taoiseach. His policies were buit around what was best for getting reelected not what was best for the country. The only slight mitigating factor for Bertie was that he was invoved in a lot of other stuff such as Northern Ireland. McCreevy and Cowen were Ministers For Finance and a lot of the blame has to rest with them.

before i make this point i am as anti FF as anyone on this island,
but in Mccreevy's defence, if you study expenditure during his tenure as minister for finance from the period 97-01 govt expenditure matched increased govt revenues for a given year. he was well know to be secretative about his budgets and would only ever allow bertie 30 mins the morning of a budget to read through his speech, it was only in the run up to the 2002 election that bertie finally snapped and got his way in making sure there was double digit increases in expenditure across the board - mccreevey was shipped off to europe soon after.

Charlie also set up the national pension reserve, which was useful in propping up the banks these last few shambolic years.

fionnsda

The people who borrowed massively, just to get on the property market!

CDfm

bamboozle wrote: »

before i make this point i am as anti FF as anyone on this island,
but in Mccreevy's defence, if you study expenditure during his tenure as minister for finance from the period 97-01 govt expenditure matched increased govt revenues for a given year. he was well know to be secretative about his budgets and would only ever allow bertie 30 mins the morning of a budget to read through his speech, it was only in the run up to the 2002 election that bertie finally snapped and got his way in making sure there was double digit increases in expenditure across the board - mccreevey was shipped off to europe soon after.

Charlie also set up the national pension reserve, which was useful in propping up the banks these last few shambolic years.

Absolutely on the ball. McCreevenomics kept the show from overheating and he should be off the list because he was not here.

dixiefly wrote: »

My problem with McCreevy is that he was the champion of the light regulation policy and had the "I have it so I'll spend it" mantra.

McCreevy was prudent and did not subscribe to the mantra that we were one of the wealthiest nations in the world. All the parties wanted more and more spending. The outcome was predictable.

People did borrow crazy multiples of income to buy property. No government made them do it. They speculated.

But also people overspent on holidays, cars , weddings etc. There is a hotel near me doing wedding packages for 4,000 euro for 50 people and its a lovely hotel. During the boom years spending on weddings was in the multiples of tens of thousands.

Everyone wanted everything.

Zynks

It would be much easier to make a list of who has no culpability in this mess...

Absurdum

on McCreevy:

http://www.irishtimes.com/focus/budget2006/mccreevyprofile.htm
But Mr McCreevy not only gambled with national prosperity, he repeatedly failed in his duty to ensure that the money given him in taxes was not squandered: he made no attempt to prevent the benchmarking scandal; he did not fight the decision to offer open-ended indemnification to the religious orders; and only belatedly did he make any effort to curb an unreformed health system's insatiable appetite for cash.

Mr McCreevy conjured up another multi-billion loss-maker all on his own. The SSIA scheme would, he said, cool the economy at a time when it was white-hot. But such measures have been tried elsewhere and failed. He knew this because his civil servants told him so. He ignored their pleadings and ploughed ahead. More bizarrely still, he undermined the stated purpose of his own scheme with the astonishingly imprudent injunction to people to "party on".

This was illustrative of Mr McCreevy's uncoordinated and unsophisticated approach to fiscal policy generally. While some of the 20th century's finest minds devoted their lives to understanding the link between public expenditure and the real economy, Mr McCreevy chose to disregard that sum of human knowledge for the fiscal philistinism of "if I have it, I'll spend it".

During seven long years and an unparalleled boom he had the opportunity to do much. Apart from his pensions fund (on balance probably a good thing), he did little. Most obviously there was no significant modernisation of the State's archaic budgeting apparatus which fails to evaluate or plan spending effectively, causing needless waste of taxpayers' money (today in rich Europe only Greece and Italy have poorer arrangements).

His lack of interest in much needed reform caused the OECD to give over most of its biennial report on Ireland in 2003 to suggesting how international best practice in the management of public expenditure could be implemented. Alas, there's more. Mr McCreevy did little to make the intellectual case against harmonising corporation tax in Europe; he damaged Ireland by deploying pseudo-patriotic bluster against EU criticism of his 2001 budget; he bent rules to help his horsey pals in Punchestown; and he filleted the Freedom of Information Act.

He more than deserves his place there.

CDfm

Zynks wrote: »

It would be much easier to make a list of who has no culpability in this mess...

Maybe we should follow the Icelandic example and start charging politicians and officials with Economic Treason.

Neary is an obvious culprit.

I don't buy the whole "light regulation -the politicians made me do it " argument. LOL - where does he think he was -kintergarten.:D

So yes the Public Servants are stakeholders in the mess-so the Dept of Finance needs culling.

trellheim

Neary the regulator
Hurley at the Central Bank.

Any independent board member of EBS/INBS/BOI/AIB/ANGLO, their governance and watchdog roles were ignored

Anybody in the banks who served in a credit control or underwriting meeting in the last 10 years

Any civil servant above AP at the Department of Finance in the last 8 years

We expect poor behaviour from politicians and developers they are like dogs with a fire hydrant having a pee (they don't know any better ) however the above were paid good money and in some cases fabulous money to ensure the wheels stayed on the wagon and their utter failure puts them way at the top

CDfm

Absurdum wrote: »

on McCreevy:


He more than deserves his place there.

If you make the case for McCreevy -you have to include Harney and the whole of the Health Service Heads and Dept of Health Heads and Heads of the Health Service Unions.

There needs to be some collective responsibility for the "unelected" who weild considerable power.

CDfm

trellheim wrote: »

Neary the regulator
Hurley at the Central Bank.

Any independent board member of EBS/INBS/BOI/AIB/ANGLO, their governance and watchdog roles were ignored

Anybody in the banks who served in a credit control or underwriting meeting in the last 10 years

Any civil servant above AP at the Department of Finance in the last 8 years

We expect poor behaviour from politicians and developers they are like dogs with a fire hydrant having a pee (they don't know any better ) however the above were paid good money and in some cases fabulous money to ensure the wheels stayed on the wagon and their utter failure puts them way at the top

+++++++ 1 very articulate and on the ball.

It amazes me that a Civil Service that walked the country into a 2 billion compensation package for victims of abuse can't join the dots on responsibility for regulation. We deserve better.

not yet

CDfm wrote: »

The Health Service Unions for putting obstacles to change and efficiencies.

250% spending increases for nothing.

The straw that broke the camels back.

spot on there james....lets blame the HSE oh and I think the firemen as well,,,,and dont forget the folks in welfare offices or bin collectors yahoo...lets burn em all.

CDfm

not yet wrote: »

spot on there james....lets blame the HSE oh and I think the firemen as well,,,,and dont forget the folks in welfare offices or bin collectors yahoo...lets burn em all.

I think you miss my point - the point i am making that if you increase spending by 250% you expect a bang for your buck which we did not get.

You dont pay Mercedes money for a Kia.

So I posted really in connection with a huge expense that was not value for money.

The current IMF/EU deals will no doubt lead to cuts and a value for money approach.

liammur

dixiefly wrote: »

1. Mccreevy - I would go as far as saying that if Haughey had been in power he wouldnt have promoted this arrogant half wit into Finance where he tried to rewrite the laws of economics against best advice from Europe and a lot of this wouldnt have happened.

2. Bertie Aherne for putting McCreevy in finance and allowing him a free reign.

3. Brian Cowan for blindly continuing McCreevy's policies and never taking any control over / meeting with the Financial Reguator.

4. Regulator - patrick Neary for not regulating probably because he knew McCreevy & co didnt want him to.

5. brian Lenihan for not going with advice he paid a fortune for which said he should have let Anglo go to the wall.

6. P.D.'s for insisting on reduced taxes while at the same time supporting the boom in pubic spending.

7. Various bankers (Seanie Fitz/ Drumm/ Fingleton etc etc) for going totally against the rules of lending & probably engaging in criminal actions.

8. After that, the developers, public sector unions, electorate who voted FF in, people who bought at the height of the boom.

Back from the pub, and reading some posts. Must admit I'm encouraged by the level here from a lot of posters. The poster who had b ahern for the top 4 positions certainly deserves credit.
McCreevy - why was he sent to brussels, was it because he was about to say 'no' to ahern and reign things in?

thetonynator

I would put all of the bankers ahead of the politicians in that list. Bertie definately worst of the politicians, mccreevy and cowen not far behind.

BingoMingo

Yeh

Bertie, Brian, Seanie and Michael did this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_external_debt

Borrowed all that money whilst we were all at Mass!

jimmycrackcorm

I'd put alison o'riordan very high up on the list. She exemplifies the stupidity of the population who think that the government should have protected them from their decisions but yet turn around and complain about the nanny state stopping them from smoking in the pub and buying alcohol after 10 pm.

recedite

dixiefly wrote: »

My problem with McCreevy is that he was the champion of the light regulation policy and had the "I have it so I'll spend it" mantra.

The rest of the quote is more relevant now; "Cos I can't spend it when I haven't got it"
He was an eejit, just lucky to have been in office during the boom and not now.