Eyeballing banks . . . and winning

Would that all of us could rely on AIB, or indeed any other bank, to be as accommodating as the former appears to have been in its dealings with former Taoiseach, Mr Charles Haughey.

That all this happened to a man who was quick to tell the rest of us to tighten our belts upon his election as Taoiseach as he still owed AIB three-quarters of a million pounds only compounds the aura of neverneverland surrounding the revelations of Mr Haughey's banking practices. Even former chief executive, Mr Gerry Scanlan, a dyed in the wool banker, was forced to agree that the case seemed to lend truth to the old adage that "if you owe the bank £1,000, it's your problem; if you owe it £1 million, it's theirs". Of course even the parade of endless overdrafts and loans fails to paint the full picture of the Haughey/AIB saga as the bank held the deeds of most of Mr Haughey's capital assets and the time and, had it chosen to, could have recouped what it was owed.

Maybe the truest words in all the saga to date were uttered by an unidentified former director of AIB who said the bank would have been mindful that around half of its customers would have been Fianna ail supporters and a repossession of Mr Haughey's property could have had an adverse impact on its business. I'll bet . . .