Richie and I

I was in Dublin last Friday where, among other things, I visited Elvery’s Sports on Stephen’s Green with a friend who needed a Leinster Rugby top. It’s not the sort of place I would be frequenting too often, but it was an eye-opener to see some of the prices they’re still getting away with.

Anyway, I was lurking near the polo-shirts while my friend was trying on the rugby top, when who should bustle in the door but good old Richie Boucher. Yes, THAT Richie Boucher, the current boss of Bank of Ireland and one of the men who “crashed Ireland” leaving us with the bill.

As it happened he seemed to be in search of polo-shirts, so he was on one side of the stand and I was on the other, about an arms-length away from him. We were the only people at that end of the shop, so we would have been free to have a little chat, shake hands, or engage in a Vulcan death grip, but none of those things happened due to my inability to decide what to do. What do you do with one of the bankers who has put thousands on the emigration trail again, ruined businesses, impoverished elderly shareholders, destroyed Ireland’s reputation abroad and bequeathed the taxpayer NAMA and the intervention of the IMF?

Boucher must be well used to these internal debates among the people who obviously notice him on the shopping trail because, after a swift look at the polo-shirts and me, he tore out the door with his little paper gift bag in his hand (didn’t catch the brand name), clearly using the agility of his sporting past as a means of avoiding unpleasant encounters. I, on the other hand, was left telling the twenty-something male shop assistant of his illustrious visitor, receiving in reply a shrug and the telling comment: “Don’t know him.”

And of course that reaction from the sportswear-clad assistant is the reason, in a nutshell, why the likes of Richie Boucher and all the other senior executives in the banks who were supposed to be “cleared-out” but weren’t, have survived. They, and the politicians, rely on the apathy of the people to avoid accountability. There are no sustained demands for justice. There are no public forums where constant pressure can be applied to the body politic for a responsible way of doing business and for “the elite” to answer for their crimes or incompetence. This is why nothing changes except the size of the bill we have to pay to enable fabulously-wealthy insiders like Richie Boucher to do his Christmas shopping without a care in the world, in the streets of the capital of the country he helped to bankrupt. And, as I recall, he didn’t even buy anything. Merry Christmas.