Bring in the Fraud Squad

11th February, 2009

The revelations today about the lending of billions of euros between Irish banks is an act of vicious vandalism against the Irish state. The reason why public money is been invested into Irish banks is because private money cannot be found. What institutional investor in the world will invest into an Irish bank? This means that more public money will need to be found. We should now pause and decide whether the capitalisation model is the right one to implement.

The Fine Gael model of a bad bank should now be urgently considered. I also believe that two further things should happen:

Firstly, the Garda Fraud squad must be called in. The public demand nothing less and it must be done to get the confidence of the public and the financial markets back.

Secondly, a levy of 99% should be instated on any bonuses paid at executive or board level. Let’s have a levy the entire country can get behind!