Maintaining the illusion

In a real democracy the revelations of the mafia type scams engaged in by estate agents and mortgage brokers as exposed on last Monday’s Prime Time would provoke immediate and effective police action.

In this corrupt state no effective action is ever taken. It is however, very important to maintain the illusion that Ireland is an accountable democracy. Here are some examples of great Irish illusionists.

Bertie Ahern, our Prime Minister declared that legislation to deal with such corruption is due to come before the Oireachtas shortly. This is a standard response by politicians, it means nothing. There are dozens of urgent bills ‘due any day now’.

Billy Hawkes, The Data Protection Commissioner has sent in a team of inspectors to investigate the two companies highlighted in the Prime Time programme. He has also said his office will be carrying out random inspections of mortgage brokers over the next couple of weeks.

The suspicion here is that this idea of actually inspecting companies has only just occurred to the commissioner. In any case the commissioner’s office is, like all Irish ‘enforcement’ authorities, a toothless tiger.

Paul Appleby, Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement has launched a consultation paper to address the very dodgy activities surrounding many estate management companies covered by the Prime Time programme.

Submissions from interested parties should be on Mr. Appleby’s desk by next March. No sense of urgency there. Doesn’t matter really because Mr. Appleby’s office is also a toothless tiger.

The so called Financial Regulator is also going to investigate the mafia type operations of estate agents, developers and estate management companies as a result of the programme.

Don’t expect much here as this organization is the must useless of all Irish ‘enforcement’ authorities.

Despite the millions that have been robbed from consumers by financial institutions over recent years, the FR has never taken action against any of them. In any case, consumers will never know the result of the investigation because the FR treats all such information as a state secret.

Barry Andrews, Fianna Fail backbencher was wheeled out to waffle about how the Government was going to take action. He (rashly) stated that he would see to it that action would be taken before the upcoming general election. His promises mean nothing as he is a powerless non entity.

Irish consumers can be sure of only one thing – the State will take no effective action against these cowboys.