EDITORIAL : THE INDEPENDENT, IRELAND

 

Obscene rewards for the architects of our downfall

 

THE princes who rode the Celtic Tiger's back to personal fortune have escaped the crash now that the wheels have come off the chariot. Although they were the ones with the reins in their hands who steered us into our quagmire of debt, they are nonetheless to be lavishly rewarded.

The idea that those whose decisions, or in some cases indecision, were responsible for the failure of our banks and the ensuing financial meltdown can now retire on pensions of between €115,000, and €650,000 a year -- paid for by and large by the taxpayer -- might come as the last straw for the camel's back.

However, there is more.

For the pensions are merely an add-on to six-figure termination payments, tax-free lump sums, and golden parachutes that they were inexplicably given.

There is something almost Swiftian about the ludicrous nature of these payments.

The little people continue to pay despite the colossal damage the clumsy oafs have visited upon the nation by their disastrous careering through the economy.

It is monstrously unfair that a sum close to €60m has been set aside to fund these gilded few at the same time that the Central Statistics Office has cautioned that almost 900,000 workers, mainly in the private sector, have no pension whatsoever.

The scale of the injustice comes home when you consider that a worker would have to find €35,000 a month for a pension fund to garner the amount to be paid out to our former Taoiseach Brian Cowen.

That all this could be happening when we are reliant on the IMF and the EU to give us the €75m we are borrowing every single day to keep the country running, boggles the mind even further.

This week, Justice Minister Alan Shatter said senior bankers may not get contractual payoffs on retirement because their banks are effectively in liquidation.

Addressing the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors, Mr Shatter said that multi-million euro payoffs for bankers were grossly immoral.

For all the talk, however, there seems to be an inexplicable air of resignation and acceptance.

The dichotomy is how the State can justify paying out such hideously bloated sums when there is no sanction for those whose failures have cost us all so dearly.

Taxpayers have, after all, endured three hair-shirt Budgets and absorbed levies and charges to pay for the crippled banks.

Almost half a million people are now on the dole because of our economic mess.

How much more are they expected to absorb?

Everything has changed for the ordinary man and woman trying to survive, but the people who brought the economy down are living high on the hog.

We have been through a calamity, and it is hardly surprising that it has taken some time to restore a degree of perspective and balance.

Internationally we continue to be locked out of the bond markets because the financial community does not believe that we are a worthwhile risk.

If we are to win back confidence we must give a firm signal that there are severe consequences for those who were reckless and irresponsible.

As things stand, we are being treated almost on a daily basis to tragi-comic revelations, which add layers of confusion and ambivalence.

The banks are broke -- we know this because the nation has been bankrupted trying to fix them.

What rationale can there be, therefore, for paying astronomical sums to those responsible for the ruin?

If we are to be taken seriously, we must start behaving in a manner that befits the gravity of the economic crisis.

A prescription of austerity for the masses and luxury for those whom have beggared the country does not make for a convincing economic narrative.