FORMER CHAIRMAN of An Board Snip Nua, Colm McCarty says that the current economic crisis was ‘self-inflicted’ and ‘avoidable’.

Speaking at the MacGill Summer School last night, McCarthy said the current crisis is worse than the crisis of the 1980s. He says we didn’t have a banking crisis then and we had the ability to devalue the punt, which was a major benefit.

McCarthy said there was a failure of governance in the country: “We’ve had relatively a bigger banking collapse than anyone else.” Most of the damage was “self-inflicted and could have been avoided,” he said. There were plenty of warnings but these were not heeded.

McCarthy also complained that “public debate is dominated by lobbyists and not by analysis.” He also blamed the media, saying that public debate on the economy was not serious enough.

“A lot of the broadsheet media have gone downmarket,” he said. He also pointed the finger at RTÉ. “The media, again, tend to be quite willingly fed by lobbyists”, with a lot of “rewritten PR handouts”.

He said that the role of auditors in banking had been a “fiasco” and that this should be investigated.

McCarthy also said that the senate should be abolished as it was a waste of minister’s time.