Half time arrives in the Klaus and Max game as crowds await second half with Honohan

The Government and Opposition battle it out for the banking crisis moral high ground, writes MIRIAM LORD

IN SOUTH Africa, the home team, Bafana Bafana, could only manage a draw.

In Leinster House, the Government team, Biffana Biffana, sneaked a win.

Afterwards, when it came to the loud blowing of trumpets, honours were even between Johannesburg and Dublin.

It’s the political football that concerns us here, and yesterday’s fight between the Government and the Opposition for the banking crisis moral high ground.

In the middle, the refereeing partnership of Herr Klaus and Mr Max.

They had no intention of taking sides, but it didn’t stop both teams from desperately trying to sign them up.

On one side, representing the Government – Biffana Biffana.

On the other, the Labour/Fine Gael selection – Gilinda Gilinda.

At stake: bragging rights in the Dáil, superiority on the national airwaves and clearance to wear the crown of vindication.

The question: Brian Cowen and Fianna Fáil, are they primarily to blame for our economic collapse?

Biffana Biffana dearly wanted their visiting experts to say this is not the case.

Gilinda Gilinda’s goal was to have them state the opposite.

Apart from a few tantalising forays into both halves, Klaus and Max stayed determinedly in the centre circle.

Battle lines were drawn long before the authors of the preliminary report on Ireland’s banking crisis pitched up before the Oireachtas finance committee. By the time Klaus Regling and Max Watson arrived, the rival camps were deeply entrenched in their positions.

Often members of committees attempt to give an impression of openness and impartiality.

At committee, even the political pitbulls pretend to hand in their studded collars and channel their inner guide dog.

They couldn’t do it yesterday. Too much at stake.

Did Herr Klaus and Mr Max – they proved a great double act, German Klaus Regling playing straight man to the more extrovert Englishman Max Watson – realise how needy their audience was?

Of course they did. You don’t become an expert on international finance, dealing with governments and global agencies, without learning how to sniff out a politically loaded question or how to sidestep a partisan steer.

The lad Richard Bruton – how he’d love to be Fine Gael’s Captain Fantastic – gave 110 per cent in his effort to wring some sort of confirmation from the distinguished witnesses that the Ahern government and its finance minister Cowen were to blame for the crisis.

Young Joan Burton, on the wing for Labour, ran her legs off trying to get one of them to point the finger of blame at Fianna Fáil. But the pair wouldn’t play ball.

What about Biffo and company not heeding advice? “We came to the opinion that there was not a lot of good advice,” came the reply from Klaus.

“Oh, sweet Jesus!” squeaked a retired civil servant in the public gallery.

Mellifluous Max was great with the metaphors. He said our banks should have known “the elastic is stretching. Some day it will have to go.” (An appalling vista too far, given the dramatis personae in this particular tragedy.)

There were some warning signals, but nobody that mattered, anywhere in the world, seemed to heed them.

“It was clearly like waves of warm water on a soft cliff: nothing got eroded in the process.”

Each time Richard and Joan tried to get them to consider the political dimension, Herr Klaus and Mr Max deftly sidestepped them. Patrick Honahan, author of the second report into the banking crisis, had dealt with that end of things, they said.

However, perhaps an indication of their real feelings on the debacle could be divined from their lavish praise for the Honohan report.

“It will go down in the literature as an epic example of documenting why a supervisory system failed.” And Mr Honohan didn’t pull his punches with the government.

Nonetheless, Team Biffana Biffana were most encouraged, particularly when Klaus and Max said the IMF didn’t cop what was going on either. They came in with an underdog look about them, but left with their tails up.

Noel Ahern had the crowd rolling in the aisles, regaling Klaus and Max with stories of the government’s prudence back in the days when . . . oh, when Bertie was taoiseach. As for tax incentives, once upon a time they were great things, and always very popular.

Richard Bruton nearly passed out, he was giggling so much.

He has to laugh, does Noel, when he listens to all this stuff about the IMF and international factors and then he hears people say the crisis was home grown.

“And you see all the problems in Spain and Portugal and I think ‘my god, how did little Ireland manage to influence all that?’”

Joan Burton was agog. “You’re protecting the brother!”

“I think there was no real question,” replied Klaus, maxing out Max in the punchline stakes.

Biffana Biffana left the field yesterday feeling that the crown of vindication is within their grasp.

But Patrick Honohan is coming to the committee on Tuesday.

Game of two halves, lads, and all that.