Putting the Cart before the Horse

A letter from to the Impartial Reporter Newspaper this week from an concerned observer

Dear Sir,

The prison sentence handed down to Sean Quinn's son, and that pending for his nephew, is a travesty of justice. When Aesop wrote his Fables, in about the sixth century BC, he used animal imagery to illustrate a particular point. This technique, which I follow here, enables one to tell a moral tale clearly and to get swiftly to the point.

'The law is an ass', wrote Charles Dickens in Oliver Twist. The Dublin court is an ass to be chasing after the Quinn family's assets at the present time. If Judge Elizabeth Dunne wants to demonstrate justice being done, then she should consider suspending all endeavours to impound the Quinn family's properties in various countries. The case which should be heard first is that of the Quinn family's action against the Anglo-Irish Bank. Also, justice should await the outcome of the investigation into Anglo's non-recourse loans to a select number of borrowers to buy out a stake in the bank.

From the early sixteenth century, if you did things in the wrong order, you were said to 'put the cart before the horse', with the result that chaos would ensue, of course. There can be no justice for the Quinn family until these other matters are dealt with first.

The Quinn saga is not a simple matter. To purge and purloin the Quinn international financial empire first is a denial of justice, whose sinister shenanigans can affect us all. The changing of the name of the Anglo-Irish Bank to the state-owned Irish Banking Resolution Corporation (IBRC) does not change the concept of duty owed to customers of the former bank.

The name change is but a form of window dressing. Nor is it helpful to have, in all the circumstances, a chairman who was formerly a politician, Alan Dukes, one-time leader of Fine Gael. The IBRC claims to be 'run in the public interest.' It would have been more transparent to have appointed as chairman some distinguished, learned, independent, international finance expert.

The public has been badly served by the broken promises of some politicians, also by the deception and the deceit of many bankers. One of the last bastions of democracy is the rule of law, and how fairly the law is seen to be applied, with the welfare and freedom of the citizen as of paramount concern, before those of state institutions.

The Quinn family, over three decades, showed positive and consistent determination and perseverance, and built up a number of companies, which provided employment for seven thousand people. The Quinn family have been badly let down by Government Ministers both in Belfast and Dublin. And it is very easy for the media to jump on the bandwagon to look for a scapegoat in the Quinn affair.

The bankers are considerably to blame, as are the politicians who were in power and who failed to see that the Bank was properly regulated. It is in the interests of justice for all that, when the citizens' rights are put at risk, cases and investigations should be heard in a proper and logical order. There can only be mayhem, with the serious risk of injustice, when the cart is put before the horse.

Yours faithfully,

Neil C. Oliver,

Castle Toppy

114 Crawfordsburn Road

Newtownards