Lessons from the Financial Crisis - Spare Room, Cork, 29.9.19

5. “Denis Casey, chief
executive of Irish Life and
Permanent, said the
guarantee would allow
Permanent TSB and the
other Irish banks covered to
borrow more cheaply.
“The oxygen supply for Irish
banks was being cut off and
healthy banks were starting
to gasp for breath. This
guarantee turns on the
oxygen supply.”

13. NAMA PROPERTIES = c.16,000

19. “The problem here is that, when one looks at the top 190 debtors
in the NAMA universe with debts of €62 billion, a relatively small
number of people were chasing the same assets and it was like a
Ponzi scheme. They overborrowed and were overlent to by
banks. There was huge inflation of asset values and this was not
sustainable in the context of the economy. There was a
disconnect between the economy growing at 8% or 9% per
annum and lending by banks growing at 35% or 40% per year.
The problem was caused by overpaying for assets.”
Brendan McDonagh, Chief Executive, NAMA, in evidence to the Public Accounts Committee, 26
October 2011

59. Mediated Corruption
‘The individual who abuses public office for private gain does not
necessarily always directly benefit.
Instead [it] may indirectly benefit the public officials’ family, friends,
political associates, political party, constituency or other affiliation
associated with the public official.
The gain is political, often indirect, and valuable within its own
context.
Corruption therefore is the use of public office for private gain
without any direct link to a precise favour but in anticipation of future
benefits.
It may encompass undue influence in the formulation of policy and
legislation by vested interests at the expense of the public interest
but which benefit political actors through popular and political
support.’ (p.13)

60. Mediated Corruption
‘The mediated approach recognises that
the preservation of public trust is not just a
question of discerning legal rights from
wrongs, but upholding the very spirit of the
law….
…An awareness of mediated corruption
reintroduces notions of moral
responsibility which have been lost on an
over dependence on legal definitions of
corruption.’ (p.13)

61. Ch.2 – Why So Little Corruption? 1900s-1920s
‘[An] unconditional respect for the rule of law, and the
pride in the 1922 Free State Constitution, generated a
collective moral bond….
…Although Ireland was not partitioned, this revolutionary
generation not only restored legislative independence lost
through the Act of Union, 1801, but secured wider
sovereignty for post-independence Ireland.
They achieved this because they sacrificed their self-
interest for the public good and assumed that the lessons
of Irish history were enough for this principle to endure
after them’ (p.33)

64. Mediated Corruption
‘The individual who abuses public office for private gain does not
necessarily always directly benefit.
Instead [it] may indirectly benefit the public officials’ family, friends,
political associates, political party, constituency or other affiliation
associated with the public official.
The gain is political, often indirect, and valuable within its own
context.
Corruption therefore is the use of public office for private gain
without any direct link to a precise favour but in anticipation of future
benefits.
It may encompass undue influence in the formulation of policy and
legislation by vested interests at the expense of the public interest
but which benefit political actors through popular and political
support.’ (p.13)

69. ‘In general, white-collar crime is considered to be crime
committed by the natural persons, those capable of wearing
white-collars, while corporate crime is committed by artificial
legal persons, corporate entities….
… The core contribution of [Edwin] Sutherland’s work… was to
show that white-collar wrongdoing was a serious form of crime
which was not defined as such by the legal system…
… Though corporate and white-collar crime is a broad area of
inquiry, this monograph is restricted to an analysis of the
enforcement of criminal offences in the Companies Act and
matters which have had an impact on their enforcement.’ (pp.6-7)

71. ‘… criminology is typically defined as the study of
acts designated as crime by law, rather than
more broadly as a study of the ways humans can
harm one another.
This means that the subject matter of
criminology… will always be shaped by what
governments choose to criminalize, rather than
by analytic criteria independent of these political
processes.
Insofar as the process of criminalization… is a
politicized one, political-economic arrangements
and hegemonic consciousness, rather than any
calculus of demonstrable social harm, dominates
the definition of crime.’ (p.6)