The fallen chieftain Sean Quinn may be behind bars but the symbols of his once omnipotent power dominate the landscape between Ballyconnell, Co Cavan, and Derrylinn, Co Fermanagh.
From the impressive lakeside stone and iron mansion to the cement works towering over the town, everything seems connected to the former billionaire who went weeping to Mountjoy Prison last Friday, like a Gaelic warlord being led to the tower.
They may have cheered at the news at the economics forum in Co Kilkenny, but in the town of Ballyconnell the sympathy for the man who turned this countryside into 'Quinn Land' remains firm and steadfast.
Just a year ago, the man who was once worth €4.7bn still had a private jet and his helicopter sat in the forecourt of the Slieve Russell Hotel -- an enduring symbol of his reign -- outside the town.
But now it has all turned to bitterness and dust; the business he built is in the hands of receivers and liquidators, the founder of the empire banned from even treading on the land that once made him Ireland's richest man.
In Ballyconnell, on Friday night, the television was reluctantly turned from Stateside Racing to the news. RTE's Richard Downes stood on the street outside as pictures flashed across the screen of Quinn being escorted from the Four Courts to a prison van to begin a nine-week sentence that could see him spending Christmas behind bars.
It is a fall of epic proportions, and is almost too much for the local people to endure.
"It's a fucking disgrace," said a voice inside The Molly Maguires pub as the news flashed across the screen.
ANALYSIS PAGES 14, 15
"The thing is that nobody else has suffered -- the politicians, the bankers, the civil servants, the accountants, they are all on the big pensions, but the man who created it all is being crucified," said Toirbhealach Lyons, from behind the bar of the pub he bought 15 years ago.
"Sean Quinn stood up for his people -- he went to jail" he added.
"I think they thought he wouldn't do it. It's crazy that the man who created it all, all the employment, all that wealth apart from his one, has gone to jail and the bankers and the rest of them are walking around free."
It's easy to see why Quinn has such support in this town and the surrounding hinterland.
Lyons said his bar has thrived on the money spent by Quinn workers. and others around Ballyconnell and Derrylinn echo his words.
As you drive out of town, the cement and gravel works glisten on a frosty morning.
On each side of the road are the Quinn companies -- the headquarters of the business, the radiator company, the glass company, the plastics company, the rooftiles company.
This is the dream of a farmer's son who began by digging into the landscape to extract gravel and from it grew an empire that employed 5,000 people locally. Quinn may have moved on to insurance and financial services, to a mad gamble on Anglo Irish Bank shares, but here they haven't forgotten what he started and what he gave them.
"We made money in this pub because of Sean Quinn's workers, every shop in the village is the same," said Mr Lyons.
"But we are not just fighting for Sean Quinn, we are fighting for all those people who have become victims of the banks, the business people and the mortgage holders."
Ronan Maguire, who is having a quiet drink in the corner, spoke of the 'Scales of Justice' -- and as far as the people of Cavan and Fermanagh are concerned, the scales have tipped badly against Sean Quinn.
For a man who did so much to end in jail is almost unbelievable.
"Sean Quinn worked in Derrylinn for 38 years, he created all those jobs, ask anybody around her and people who worked for him will tell you they built their houses with the wages he paid and many of them went on to start their own businesses," said Karl Dwyer.
"It's a disgrace what has happened."
John Joe Brady, who is chairman of the local football team, talks about Sean Quinn starting with an old David Brown tractor and building his business, block by block.
But almost as importantly he stayed in Ballyconnell, he built his house there, reared his children and still rambled down to the local pub to play cards on a Saturday night.
"If he came in here he'd buy you a drink, and he'd allow you to buy him one back," said Mr Brady, with some pride.
It was the same with his wife.
She was known in the town and would be seen walking down the main street, talking to people, going into local shops, and attending Mass on a Saturday evening.
But the bitterness that once dominated the area over the fate of Sean Quinn seems to have been replaced with quiet resignation. The talk was not about what would be done next, but about the bravery of their chieftain to take everybody by surprise and accept his fate, walking from the Four Courts to the prison van with the dignity of a great man brought low by fate and the banking system.
Somehow by going to jail he seemed to purge the "extraordinary bitterness" of both sides in this dispute, as referred to by Supreme Court judge Adrian Hardiman.
Whether they are right or not, members of the Quinn family agree with the words of Mr Justice Hardiman, that "Anglo Irish Bank has ruined them by treating them in a cynical and manipulative fashions, and in particular by inducing. . . them to borrow money for the purpose of attempting to prop up the Anglo share price by the purchase of its shares, when the latter were in or approaching free fall".
That argument is one you will hear repeated across Ballyconnell and the surrounding area.
They say that Sean Quinn owed €2.3bn to Anglo when he was ousted from the business in 2011 -- but that figure has grown by hundreds of million since, as money goes to security firms, receivers, liquidators and lawyers.
In Ballyconnell this is seen as a battle between a man who created a conglomerate that spread its wealth far and wide through communities that never new prosperity and a group of well-padded bankers in Dublin who ran a bank that was "too big to fail".
In the Slieve Russell Hotel, the first symbol of Sean Quinn's wealth and influence, it is almost as if the man had never existed.
"The fancy place" as the locals refer to it is filled with weekenders, including many families, who have come for the golf and the spa and the bargain weekend breaks.
It is like a "bubble" outside the town, and only wedding party's venture into Ballyconnell for a few pints before the reception.
Otherwise the patrons stay aloof in their comfort, isolated from the turmoil that has surrounded the Quinn Group.
Outside the family home, which borders the golf course, is a package containing cartons of milk.
Members of the family are inside the grandiose mansion, their jeeps parked outside. But they don't want to come out to talk, it's not bitterness any more.
Maybe they are just exhausted by the process that seems to be grinding them down as first the son and now father go behind prison bars. Or maybe it's just that they have nothing left to say, the fall of Sean Quinn, the billionaire high-flyer turned prison inmate says it all.
Even in Ballyconnell they seem exhausted by the saga that still has a long way to run.
- Liam Collins
No comments:
Post a Comment