ALERT READER Joe Hackett has submitted the photograph, which was taken on his mobile phone in the arrivals area of Dublin Airport last weekend.
It’s an advertisement for AIB, obviously designed for the benefit of visitors to our fair island, who may not know any better. Unfortunately, it’s also visible to returning Irish fliers, some of whom, on seeing it, may regret not bringing sick bags off the plane. “Welcome to Ireland’s leading banking team,” the slogan says: “Welcome to making business happen.” Many people will sympathise with Joe, from Dalkey, who found that the sight of AIB managers patting themselves on the back caused him to experience nausea of the kind normally resulting from severe turbulence.
“With upwards of €20,000,000,000 of their previous lending decisions being passed over to the taxpayer, [it] is truly breathtaking in its dishonesty,” he says of the billboard, adding: “There is absolutely no doubt but that AIB’s overall lending policies (corporate or otherwise) have contributed hugely to bringing our country to the brink of financial disaster.” Never mind the content, the timing of the ad could hardly be worse. As even first-time arrivals in Dublin Airport would quickly learn, the main business our banks were making happen yesterday was Dáil business, with the Minister for Finance revealing just how much it would cost taxpayers to bail them out. In the case of AIB, to quote our own lead story, the amount would be “far higher than previously thought”.
I have scanned the picture carefully for any hint of regret. But with their assured, almost smug smiles, the executives portrayed do not appear to be afflicted with self-doubt. Unless there is a coded apology in their – to coin a phrase – “haircuts”. Perhaps the female figure on the left signifies the AIB’s own estimation of its balance sheet prior to yesterday, while the closely-cropped figures on the right represent Nama’s revised assessment.
Then again, even the location of the billboard, in an airport arrivals area, is insensitive. Here, for example, is an excerpt from an Irish Timesnews report, dated October 2006, about the continuing economic optimism at that time from experts at AIB Global Treasury.
“Property prices are this year expected to increase by 12 per cent, and some commentators believe that the market is set for a severe downturn or even a crash . . . based on the fact that Irish people’s debt stands at 150 per cent of their incomes. However, AIB says that the risk of a severe correction is low, and a soft landing for house prices is much more likely.”
Yes, that’s what Ireland’s “leading corporate bankers” were saying then. And now, as you fly back into Dublin, where your house is worth half of what it was, and your AIB mortgage is going up again, you find yourself faced with five smiling suits from that bank who seem to be saying: “Welcome home. We hope your landing was as soft as ours.”
CHANGING SUBJECTS for a moment, but still on the theme of severe corrections, this week has brought startling news from the world of horse-racing. It concerned that recent fracas at Lingfield Park, when jockey Kieren Fallon was assaulted by an angry owner. As a result of which, according to RTÉ’s racing correspondent Colm Murray on Monday, the owner has been “hit with a £10,000 fine” by the British Horse-racing Authority.
Ordinarily, while respecting the equestrian industry’s right to deal with disciplinary issues its own fashion, I would be against all such forms of corporal punishment. After all, hitting somebody with a £10,000 fine could prove fatal – certainly if the fine were all in coins. But now I’m not so sure. Given proper medical supervision of the procedure, I think the horsey people could be pointing a way forward here for non-custodial punishment of offences. Indeed, depending on the outcome of the current inquiries, this approach might yet even be useful in the banking sector.
At Cheltenham recently, I noted the irony whereby a supposed sure thing is still referred to as a “banker”, without apparent irony. Perhaps this compliment arises from the gratitude of bookmakers, whose business has been made to look a lot more respectable by the banks’ disgrace. Considering what we now know about the standards of decision-making in high finance, the term “turf accountant” does not seem nearly as spurious as it once did.
So in a similar spirit of exchange, I suggest that rogue bankers – or at least those not deemed to deserve custodial sentences – could in future be hit with fines, à la Lingfield Park horse owner.
To facilitate the aim of those throwing the money, guilty parties could be placed in stocks (“bank stocks” they could be called, with grim irony). Whereupon, to forestall complaints from Amnesty International, I suggest the victims be given a choice between being hit by fines, and being hit by softer, organic material: eggs, vegetables, etc.
If they chose the latter, the fines would still remain in force, but they could be levied in the conventional fashion, without any of the violence used on that unfortunate horse owner.