GAA star DJ Carey’s head-scratching AIB debt deal left everyone with same question – & shows how Ireland really operates
I SHOULD have gotten into huge debt during the Boom.
That I didn’t take any of the “free” money on offer remains a great regret to this day.
I thought myself wise steering clear of the giant pyramid scheme the banks had constructed thanks to a plentiful supply of cheap German credit.
While I lived within my means (I was brought up to only spend what’s in your pocket), the rest of Ireland was barrelling up and down the slippery slide of hedonism; buying second and third homes, a new car every year, timeshares in yachts, golf club penthouses and foreign holiday villas in places like Bulgaria, Montenegro and southern Italy — most of which would never get built.
It was a time of mass hysteria, when Ireland went MAD.
And I didn’t join in. There are a few like me who didn’t.
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We believe that modesty is the mark of civility, not a flash car or a giant faux-pillared mansion on a golf course.
Ah, but how I was so wrong. Modesty gets you nowhere. Being brash and bold does.
I don’t possess a neck like a jockey’s bs. If I did, I’d have smiled at the bank manager when he offered me €500,000 to buy a second house even though I could barely afford to pay the mortgage on my first, and said: “Why yes, my good sir.”
I’d have said: “Why of course Mr Bank Manager” when he offered me a €20,000 loan to bring the family on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday around the world, no questions asked.
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But I didn’t. I sat on my hands and refused to join in the casino free-for-all. I held my nose. But I’m an idiot.
I’d have gotten all that money and it would have cost me next to nothing, because, in the end when the whole house of cards came crashing down, it wouldn’t have been ME repaying the debt, but the GOVERNMENT.
It was the Irish State that stumped up for all the excess of the Celtic Tiger, bailing out the banks to the tune of €64BILLION after Lehman Brothers went belly up in 2008.
The banks, and those they allowed to accumulate so much wealth with so little means, got off largely scot-free.
PIGS MIGHT FLY
Their debts were wiped clean. In fact, the MORE debt you had, the MORE likely it was you’d get a complete debt write-off. It’s what happens in Ireland.
It’s how we roll. Especially if you’re a high-flyer or famous but have difficulty with dough.
Charlie Haughey famously had a £1.1million debt with Allied Irish Bank “sorted” on the eve of him becoming Taoiseach in 1979.
If he’d been declared bankrupt, as was likely, he would have lost his Dail seat and he would never have taken the reins of power.
Ireland would have had a very different 1980s had that happened.
Let’s not go there.
This week, it was initially reported former Kilkenny hurling star DJ Carey had a €9.5million debt with AIB reduced to €60,000 in 2017.
Who accumulates that much debt? And how do you get there? It’s head-scratching stuff.
The news of the debt write-down was met with incredulity by most people.
And the same question sat on everyone’s lips: Was DJ treated differently because he’s a star?
AIB strongly defended the deal in a memo to staff, saying it has a robust process for debt resolution.
The Dail’s Finance Committee has invited the bank’s bosses to explain how they arrive at giving such generous write-downs. I’d love to know too.
If it were you or I, ordinary Joes, would we have secured such favourable terms? And pigs might fly.
It was subsequently revealed that AIB sold a number of DJ’s golf resort properties at Mount Juliet and the K-Club, which reduced his €9.5million debt by around €1.7million.
Bully for them. DJ still walked away from a debt pile most of us can’t comprehend.
And that sticks in the craw of many, especially those who are being hounded daily by the banks over more mundane debts, like the mortgage or the €5,000 car loan.
It seems it’s one rule for the golden boys and girls and another for the rest of us mere mortals.
That’s what most folk feel deep inside their bones about how this country really operates.
A YEAR IN FEAR
THE Russians launched their evil war a year ago today.
Putin and the goons he sent over the border into Ukraine thought their “special military operation” would be over in a matter of days and that the Ukrainians would welcome their Russian brothers with roses and open arms.
A year later and more than 200,000 Russian soldiers and 100,000 Ukrainian troops are dead or injured, countless civilians have perished and entire cities, towns and villages lie in ruins.
And the war is only getting going.
A year of murder and pillage hasn’t softened Putin’s cough.
He’s more delusional and determined than ever to emerge with some kind of victory in Ukraine, even if it takes him ten years to achieve.
He won’t win of course, his Russia is now the most hated nation in the world, whose destiny is isolation for decades to come.
NO MORE SORE TO THE CORE
A BAD back is the companion of most people (especially men) in their 50s.
All that slouching in your chair at school, a habit formed young is hard to shake, comes back to bite you eventually.
I was always roared at: “Sit up straight, you’ll regret it later in life.”
Went in one ear and out the other. Biggest mistake ever not heeding that advice.
Good posture means a pain-free existence.
The result of a lifetime of bad posture is a thoracic that has the sturdiness of jelly. And all the pain that goes with it.
The bad of life can be undone though. It’s never too late.
After much prompting from many, many people, I decided to take the plunge and join a Pilates class.
It’s essentially an hour of stretching and breathing. The goal is to strengthen the core.
After the first class I was a new man. The pains and aches had all disappeared. (They came back three days later, but that’s only to be expected after a lifetime of sagging.)
Slowly, slowly, catchy monkey. If you’ve a bad back I’d highly recommend a dose of Pilates.
I’m a convert. Praise the Lord.
FUTILITY OF FIGHT ON DRUGS
IRELAND is stoned off its nut. The young aged 20-40 are all headbangers on coke, and not just at the weekend.
Our teenagers are bombed out most of the time, too, on super-strength weed.
The only ones NOT on drugs seem to be our politicians.
I can’t decide whether that’s a good or bad thing.
Last week, Sinn Fein’s Dessie Ellis said cocaine was being taken in Leinster House.
Shock, horror – not.
Cocaine is everywhere, the drug of choice for those with some disposable income.
Those who can’t fork out for Charlie are on the grass, which is so potent it’s like dropping acid. Or so I’m told.
Fine Gael’s Hildegarde Naughton, Drugs Strategy Minister and Chief Whip, said this week that she had tried cannabis once when she was in her twenties, but “it wasn’t for me.” Good to know.
Similarly, Neale Richmond of Fine Gael said he had a smoke once in Amsterdam but it had been a “horrible experience”.
A squeeze of lemon juice into the mouth eases the heebee jeebies Neale, in case there’s ever a next time.
Justice Minister Simon Harris trotted out the usual guff last week in saying rampant cocaine use is lining the pockets of the drugs gangs and fuelling misery in communities.
We’ve heard that empty phrase for decades now without any progress being made in having a reasoned and grown-up debate about drug use in Ireland.
The war on drugs the world over has been a failure. It is a failure here, too.
There are more drugs and more addicts than ever before.
So what to do. Well, there will be a Citizen’s Assembly on drug use soon, and the Government has said what emerges will inform future drugs policy.
I doubt it very much though. Hope I’m wrong.
MOTTY A MASTER
JOHN MOTSON, who died today aged 77, was a master of the microphone.
With the sheepskin to keep warm, as it was invariably Baltic wherever he travelled for the BBC, he had an uncanny knack of projecting optimism, even in the dullest of games.
Wit was his middle name.
Who could ever forget the belter: “For those of you watching in black and white, Spurs are in the all-yellow strip.”
Or when Wimbledon beat Liverpool in 1988 to win the FA Cup: “The Crazy gang has beaten the Culture Club.”
My son, who was born long after Motson’s golden age of commentary, liked him the best of all the Match Of The Day commentators.
“He tells it like it is, warts and all,” he’d say.
And he did. You’ll be missed by many, Motty.
THE JOKE IS ON YOU
SAY “space ghettos” out loud in an American accent and you will soon crease up upon the discovery that you are actually saying “Spice Girls” in a Scottish accent.
I was so intrigued by the results that I have been repeating it over and over again in moments of despair, and it never fails to put a smile on my face.
’Twas of course Frankie Boyle who came up with what I consider to be one of the best jokes ever written, because you only need you to make you laugh. Genius.