“…I have sympathy with those who suffered”

Mr Cowen told the banking inquiry today: “It was clear we were on our own,” and “If we didn’t get it right Ireland would be set back 25 years.”

Brian Cowen is a deeply offensive man whatever way you look at him. In between slugging pints and slurring words with or without them, he said he took the best of the worst options regarding Ireland financial meltdown created by his party and him. That best/worst decision has made us the most indebted nation in the world behind Greece. The optics of it all was parish pump politics that pumped only corruption at every level.  What his ponderously slow brain failed to calculate is that he has set this country 25 years back with another 25 to follow.

When he speaks he seeks only to talk down the clock; what does come then is the blame game whatever way his verbal vomit comes out:  “ You have no monopoly on upset…” he whined to Deputy Marc Mac Sharry. 

“…I have sympathy with those who suffered” he muttered between smirking even if you did not see it. A shambolic and utterly contemptible piece of flesh that should only and ever be behind bars with his partner in crime, Bertie Ahern. Rest assured: he will not be suffering with us and sympathy does not pay the bills.

A  five year old child would have shown more common sense in running the country that this excuse of a man. The only problems left to him is how to spend his big fat pension and how to lose his big pot belly and obese body with it.  In America he would be in prison now and in China he would have been shot.

If we as a country allow this man to walk away from the monster he created along with his cohorts, then we have failed democracy in every way and the future generations of Ireland. His lack of accountability to answer for what he had done is one thing, but the inability to fall just a little over his guinness not only rests with him, it rests with us for not only allowing it to happen by weak and non- existent laws, but that it now gives encouragement to others of his ilk to do it again. If we forget this lesson now and forever then we have only ourselves to blame and deserve the consequences.   

Barry Clifford