How to do business....

Not sure what makes you think he has "friends in high places". He has no money, and the creditors mostly approved the write-off, cutting their losses as it were, because this guy was never going to even make a dent in that €18m before he died.

Yes, this kind of write-off would be and absolutely has been given to "ordinary" people under the new insolvency process. Most people probably wouldn't have been able to convince banks to give them €18m in unsecured loans in the first place, but this level of craziness was not uncommon during the boom.

Also gas how people automatically try for a political angle. As if "Bruton" is a rare name in Ireland. John Bruton has his own "Matt Bruton" in his family, and he wishes the worst thing his son had done was make some bad property deals.

He was an estate agent that moved into property consulting in the early 2000s. With a load of property and banking contacts back then, there was a lot of money sloshing around he could have grabbed onto.

I think a lot of younger people these days don't understand just how little box-ticking you could get away with before the central bank rules formally came into place.

With a couple of good architectural drawings and a meeting with someone in AIB HQ, someone could walk out again with a cheque for a couple of million euro before any ground had been broken.

That would be John Bruton of Dunboyne, Co Meath (not in Kildare).

And clearly showing you didn't actually read the article, as if you had you would have seen this in relation to the other Mr. Bruton