Laughing bankers – should be sent to jail.?

The audio recordings (released by Mr. McWilliams) are from the bank's own internal telephone system and date from the heart of the financial crisis that brought the State to its knees in September 2008. “The astonishing tapes show senior manager John Bowe, who had been involved in negotiations with the Central Bank, laughing and joking as he tells another senior manager, Peter Fitzgerald, how Anglo was luring the State into giving it billions of euro”. Utter disgust at these guys laughing at us, the public. Mr Bowe is asked by Mr Fitzgerald how they had come up with the figure of €7bn. He laughs as he is taped saying: "Just, as Drummer (then-CEO David Drummer) would say, 'picked it out of my arse'."
The question is what to do now?  I feel we should not have an oireachtas enquiry, we need a criminal investigation. We do not need a talking shop. The questions, and there are many - Where was the board of directors of Anglo? It’s inconceivable that they were not aware of what was going on? These laughing bankers have strong powers and these guys were running rings around the regulators/government/Central bank personnel. Where was the media when this was going on? What is the strength of our corporate law? How come, Anglo Irish Bank had a clean bill of health 3 months before the collapse?
Imagine – the head of the new financial service regulatory body 2004 Mr. Pat Neary (the most important job to overlook the banking system in Ireland) it took 2 years for Mr. Brian Cowen to meet Mr. Pat Neary!!
How much can this country take (Ireland)? Is suicide on the rise due to this farce/disaster? Is there a problem with ineptitude in our society? For example; when the HSE was asked how many children died under their care (with all the IT equipment and 600 highly educated staff in the department) there was an inconclusive answer.  
As a tax payer I have to accept these laughing bankers’ jokes to say no to further investigation into our financial crisis we are in. I know any investigation will lead to the supreme courts and more money for barristers to know, what we already know. If we were in England the finical services would have Mr. Drummer in jail. The executives of the Irish banks knew that back in 2008 we were in financial crisis. Yet, their jobs have been kept/secure. We are now dependant on Germany and for many years to come. We have disgraced ourselves and the embarrassment of the ‘laughing bankers’ singing ‘auf Deutschland’ what a disgrace.

Forming a committee for Clinical Facilitators/ Education in 2013

I am a Clinical Facilitator (CF) for the last couple of years in a Dublin Hospital. I found when talking to my fellow colleagues/friends who are also CF/Education that there is such a huge variance and responsibilities in our roles. We felt that we needed to come together and share/support each other in similar projects. For example, I am working in isolation on a particular projects (trying to re invent the wheel) and subsequently found out that another CF had gone through the same process, crazy! By forming a committee it would give us recognition and support we need in the clinical areas – never mind the financial implications.

Getting together as a body by sharing each other’s experiences and forming a network would be amazing.  It took Deirdre O’Kelly and Lorraine Kennedy from the Mater Private Hospital(well done) to call a meeting to discuss the formation of a committee for Clinical Facilitators/Education. At that meeting last April 2013, there was a strong consensus that a formalised group may assist with a greater recognition of the facilitator/education role. We planned to take the following steps in order to formalise the group. A joint chair person was I and Deirdre 0’Kelly (Mater Private Hospital).The elected secretary was Lorraine Kennedy (Mater Private Hospital).

We suggested for a  representatives from each hospital in Ireland would be the ideal situation. We acknowledged that there had in the past been a previous Clinical Facilitator group. However, it did not appear to have been any meetings in the past few years. We are also aware that there are many other facilitators out there that we may not have been able to contact as the e-mail list we had was not a current and up to date list. I contacted Cora Mc Crystal Education Dept Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland. She gave me a link to contact fellow colleagues in our role. http://www.nursingboard.ie/en/professional_practice.aspx  I was able to get some contacts to spread the word about our cause. Another suggestion is to, in the near future, to advertise the group in the INMO magazine to highlight the importance of our role to our CNM colleagues and hospital management.

We had our second committee meeting in Tallagh Hospital on the 22^nd May last. It was suggested that we would have greater attendance at our meeting if we were part of a subgroup.  The Practice Development group hold yearly conferences, that maybe the Facilitator/Education Group could be part of it. What is needed now is, to submit a requesting letter to the practice development committee along with ‘our terms of reference’.  At this stage we have given ourselves till the 20^th June for the feedback on the draft ‘Terms of reference’. Once that is completed we move to the next stage ........