John Gilroy (Labour) | Oireachtas source

Members of credit unions have a sense of ownership of the organisation. Senator D'Arcy referred to the corporate memory that has been lost in the banking system. Members of credit unions are well known to the risk management committees who make the lending decisions. This is commendable and is in stark contrast to the crowd of idiots who were running the other financial institutions. I call them "eejits" because they are financial idiots. During the years of the credit boom, these men - they were primarily men - decided that the basic laws of finance no longer applied to them. They decided that they had found a formula which freed them from taking into account even the most basic rules of prudential risk management. As Senator Norris will know, the ancient Greeks had a word for this - hubris - meaning that mortals were wiser than the gods. The difference is that the revenge of the Olympic gods fell on the heroes whereas the revenge of the financial gods does not seem to have affected our financial heroes but instead every member of the public is affected and the country has been more or less destroyed. Our Irish heroes were swanning around the country receiving the acclamation of other Irish heroes such as the politicians and commentators. On 5 February 2007 in a glowing hagiography, one lad said, "Seán Quinn, we salute you." Someone else, not to far from this Chamber, said-----