Sins of the Father by Conor McCabe Read Free Book Online Page B

all social ills, a bulwark against inflation, a nest-egg for retirement, a full-proof pension plan for the honest worker. It was also a multi-billion pound industry, where standards and security played a very minor role. The Kenny Report was shelved precisely because it threatened to upset the speculation machine. It threatened the livelihoods of the various politicians, bankers, builders and landowners who profiteered from the rezoning game. By the time the Telesis Report was published, only eight per cent of all materials used by foreign companies in Ireland were sourced from Ireland. This was in spite of repeated calls by foreign companies for the development of secondary industries to act as feeders for production. In the late 1980s, the widening of Ireland’s tax relief schemes to include financial services helped to turn the state into a glorified offshore bank.
    The 2008 crisis was not a natural disaster. No dams were breached, no bridges destroyed. The crisis was a paper crisis. The scramble to protect that paper brought a wave of destruction across Europe, one that has affected the lives of millions of people. The decision by the Irish government to guarantee the deposits and liabilities of the Irish banking system was a bailout of well-connected bankers, speculators and builders, and their standing army of lawyers, accountants and administrators. It was done to protect a particular strata of society.
    Such was the sale of the crisis that not everyone, even of the inner circle, could be saved. There have been bitter fights along the way, and the high-profile case of Sean Quinn and Anglo is one such example. This was not a conflict between classes, however, or two different visions of how Ireland should be. Neither Quinn nor Anglo were calling for the democratic transformation of finance in this battle.
    Even today, after all that has happened, there are alternatives. They are present in the work produced by the likes of the Nevin Economic Research Institute; TASC; NIPSA; Trademark Belfast; Social Justice Ireland; Unite; MANDATE; Research on Money and Finance; the New Economics Foundation; ATTAC; Syriza; Dexter Whitfield; Yanis Varoufakis; and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, to name just a few. There are many others across Europe engaged in struggles against the dominance of the financial rentiers in political, social and economic life. It is incumbent upon us to learn more about the work they do.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
OFFICIAL PUBLICATIONS
    A House of your Own (1967)
    A Preliminary Report on the Sources of Ireland’s Banking Crisis (2010)
    Agricultural Statistics 1847-1926: Reports and Tables (1928)
    Census ’91, Volume 10: Housing (1997)
    Census 2002: Volume 13: Housing (2004)
    Commission of Inquiry into the Resources and Industries of Ireland, Report on Stock-Breeding Farms for Pure-Bred Dairy Cattle (1921)
    Committee on the Price of Building Land, Report to the Minister for Local Government (1974)
    Digest of evidence taken before Her Majesty’s Commissioners of Inquiry into the state of the law and practice in respect to the occupation of land in Ireland. Part I, House of Lords , Vol. XXXV (1847)
    EU/IMF Programme of Financial Support for Ireland (2010)
    Eurostat Yearbook 2010
    Housing in the Seventies (1969)
    IDA Annual Report 2009 (2010)
    Urban And Rural Renewal Tax Incentive Schemes (1999)
    Misjudging Risk: Causes of the Systemic Banking Crisis in Ireland (2011)
    Report of Inquiry into the Housing of the Working Classes of the City of Dublin 1939/43 (1943)
    Second Programme for Economic Expansion: Laid by the Government before each House of the Oireachtas (1963)
    The Irish Banking Crisis: Regulatory and Financial Stability Policy 2003-2008 (2010)
    United States Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Repatriating Offshore Funds: 2004 Tax Windfall for Select Multinationals Majority Staff Report (October 2011)
JOURNALS, NEWSPAPERS AND ONLINE PUBLICATIONS
Anglo: Not Our Debt
Le Monde
Asia Times Online
Leitrim