Severe Irish Times criticism of Shane Ross's support for Fingleton and Fitzpatrick

Brendan Burgess

Brendan Burgess

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Stephen Collins has a good opinion piece in today's Irish Times under the heading
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In his report, Nyberg was critical of the media for lauding Anglo Irish Bank. “Anglo in particular was widely admired domestically and abroad and lauded (by many investors, consultants, analysts, rating agencies and the media) as a role model for other Irish banks to emulate,” said the report.


One of those in the media who lauded Anglo and Irish Nationwide was Shane Ross, who was also a senator during the boom and is now an Independent TD for Dublin South.


During the recent election campaign, his constituency rival Alan Shatter pointed out that from 2000 to 2007, Ross “criticised Bank of Ireland and AIB for their failure to adopt the catastrophic banking practices of Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide, and used his position as a journalist to put public pressure on those banks to follow the disastrous banking road map constructed by Seán FitzPatrick and Michael Fingleton.”


Ross’s error of judgment on the banks has not stopped him from pontificating on the crisis and calling for others to be punished for their errors. In the Dáil during the week, he dismissed Nyberg as “ineffective” because he failed to name names; he went on to demand that former Labour leader Dick Spring be sacked from the position he has held for the past two years as a public interest director of AIB, because of the massive and probably unavoidable pay-off approved for former chief executive Colm O’Doherty.


Ross is not the only public figure who has been quick to behold the mote in eye of others while conveniently ignoring the beam in his own. The general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, David Begg, has been vocal in his criticisms of government since the crisis began and also of anyone who has dared to point to the role of social partnership in stretching the public finances past breaking point. He has not been so quick to account for his own performance as a member of the board of the Central Bank right through the boom.
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Was a bit suprised to read this piece as normally journalists do not criticise too harsly fellow journalists. However in view of Shane Ross being now a T.D. may have changed matters. Agree entirely with the comments expressed.
 
Also very surprised. But now that Shane Ross is a TD shouldnt he resign his position from Sunday Independent? Seems an unfair advantage/platform to promote his own agenda
 
The fact that he was wrong in the past doesn't bar him from comment, nor automatically devalue any insights he has made.Who hasn't been wrong about something or changed their mind?

If perfect wisdom & foresight were a requirement for comment, no one would say anything. Ross should explain all this, if he meets the challenge head on and offers an honest, direct & rational explanation, I would value this more than an impossible consistency of "rightness" that politicians & Joe Public seem to feel are neccessary. We need to hear his response before deciding on what this all means.
 
In his report, Nyberg was critical of the media for lauding Anglo Irish Bank. “Anglo in particular was widely admired domestically and abroad and lauded (by many investors, consultants, analysts, rating agencies and the media) as a role model for other Irish banks to emulate,” said the report.
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Well now we know that all the investors, consultants, analysts, rating agencies and the media hadn't a clue. Neither did Shane Ross. Now we also know to never believe anything anyone in the financial world tells us. That they live in a parallel universe to us. That the world of banking is all a big lie, that unlike us if they make mistakes we pay and if we make mistakes we also pay.
 
You know I find this odd. Ross is an accomplished journalist used to sniffing around for stories and inconsistencies. To imagine he made himself such a hostage to fortune doesn't seem entirely credible. That's not to say he didn't, but it does seem strange.

Collins may be spot on, but I find the idea of such a saavy guy as Ross leaving himself so exposed to this kind of attack a bit hard to understand. He can come out and deny it, and back up that denial with facts, say nothing at all, try to squirm out of it, or accept he was wrong. Whatever way he plays it will say a lot about him.
 
Surely there is written evidence of his support for these institutions in the past.
 
I don't really have a problem with Ross and Seán Fitzpatrick. I never read anywhere that Anglo was a con. One financial journalist said it to me around 10 years ago that Anglo was unsustainable and I am sure that there is analysis around which predicted the demise of Anglo. But Anglo was universally admired in much the same way as a company like CRH or Aryzta is universally admired at the moment. Sure there will be some analysts saying that they are overvalued. I would have been impressed if Ross had predicted the demise of Anglo, but the fact that he didn't shouldn't be held against him. This is what Nyberg said about Anglo:

Anglo in particular was widely admired domestically and abroad,and lauded (by many investors, consultants, analysts, rating agencies and the media) as a role model for other Irish banks to emulate.
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But I do have a problem with Ross and Irish Nationwide. For some unexplained reason, when many people were critical of Michael Fingleton, Ross went out of his way to defend him and the Irish Nationwide. Ross claimed to be campaigning on behalf of the ordinary consumer and publicised overcharging cases by every other institution but would never highlight the worst offender, Michael Fingleton. When we put down motions of no confidence in Fingleton in 2002, Ross was very critical of us and praised Fingleton for his resounding defeat of our motions.

He has never explained why and he should.
 
horusd said:
The fact that he was wrong in the past doesn't bar him from comment, nor automatically devalue any insights he has made.Who hasn't been wrong about something or changed their mind?

If perfect wisdom & foresight were a requirement for comment, no one would say anything.
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That's all grand if you believe the business editor of our top selling Sunday broadsheet had every right to be as clueless as the rest of us.

If I was business editor of a paper read by 30% of the adult population I'd be struggling with how I couldn't point out by 2006 that Anglo were engaging in fairly unsustainable lending practices. I'd certainly feel some responsibility for informing the public of the big issues.
 
DerKaiser said:
That's all grand if you believe the business editor of our top selling Sunday broadsheet had every right to be as clueless as the rest of us.
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That's all grand if you believe the business editor of our top selling Sunday broadsheet who markets himself as 'scourge of the bankers' had every right to be as clueless as the rest of us.
 
Brendan Burgess said:
Shane Ross didn't really like the Nyberg Report

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/c...-ross-nyberg-led-inside-bank-job-2628264.html

Brendan
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Pity he didn't not like it enough to bother to show up on the Dáil on the day the report was discussed there. He was on holidays, just two weeks before the Dáil was due to close for its own Easter break - but I'm sure he really deserved a little break. The stress of being a TD for five weeks must have been unbearable.
 
DerKaiser said:
If I was business editor of a paper read by 30% of the adult population I'd be struggling with how I couldn't point out by 2006 that Anglo were engaging in fairly unsustainable lending practices. I'd certainly feel some responsibility for informing the public of the big issues.
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Well how could he know this if the bankers were in denial and the regulators and the auditors were useless and the government didn't want to know.

Where exactly would he get the knowledge to tell us it was all going to go belly up? It seems all those in charge were in agreement with each other that everything was okey dokey so how would Ross know different.
 
Bronte said:
Where exactly would he get the knowledge to tell us it was all going to go belly up?
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From the INBS members who were highlighting the problems with Fingleton's regime. Ross has all the information he needed, but he chose to continue to support Fingleton.
 
Bronte said:
Well how could he know this if the bankers were in denial and the regulators and the auditors were useless and the government didn't want to know.

Where exactly would he get the knowledge to tell us it was all going to go belly up? It seems all those in charge were in agreement with each other that everything was okey dokey so how would Ross know different.
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If any of us were paid a full time wage to devote a large proportion of our time thinking about business in Ireland around the middle of the last decade, we'd have to hold our hands up and admit a high level of incompetence for not seeing what Anglo was doing was unsustainable.

By my reckoning between completions and the funding of property purchases, they alone must have been reponsible setting in motion up to a hundreds of thousands housing units over a few short years.

If Ross has no access to better information or even a better understanding of the fundamentals than his readers, he was imcompetent at his role
 
DerKaiser said:
If any of us were paid a full time wage to devote a large proportion of our time thinking about business in Ireland around the middle of the last decade, we'd have to hold our hands up and admit a high level of incompetence for not seeing what Anglo was doing was unsustainable.

If Ross has no access to better information or even a better understanding of the fundamentals than his readers, he was imcompetent at his role
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But Ross wasn't just looking at Anglo? And if Anglo were lying/hiding/withholding information/tranferring money around secretly, even if you're very clever like Ross how would you know any of that?

Maybe I'm coloured by my liking of Ross but to me he's not the villian of the piece. I like his articles and books, that takes some amount of work uncovering what was going on in Irish organisations, the risk he took in doing the uncovering (and the risk people who gave him that information took) and it's not his job to tell us that all was not ok with Anglo in those circumstances. Really he and the whistleblowers should be applauded for the information we did get.

I think our ire would be better served being vented at the auditors/government/anglo management/regulator who are really the people who ought to be working in our best interest instead of completely the other way around. And now our ire should be at the delay in bringing prosecutions by the Gardai and the DPP and our our legal system wherein no doubt nobody will be brought to book.
 
Ross has a very obvious blind spot about Fingleton and Irish Nationwide. He has never explained this. For one who has marketed himself as the scourge of the bankers, he needs to explain this.
 
Complainer said:
Ross has a very obvious blind spot about Fingleton and Irish Nationwide. He has never explained this. For one who has marketed himself as the scourge of the bankers, he needs to explain this.
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But it's not just that he is the scourge of the bankers, he is always campaigning against cronyism. On the face of it, his selective refusal to criticise Fingleton, looks like cronyism. He should explain why it's not.
 
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