OK, so I don't have an account with National Irish Bank. So I don't have a right to be personally outraged - it hasn't stolen any of my money. What has happened, though, is outrageous.
We were supposed to be able to trust our national banks. They were almost the only institutions left that hadn't suffered from major scandals.
Our politicians had their standing eroded by Haughey and Lowry. Our beef suffered from the threat of BSE. The blood supply was tarnished by hepatitis C. Even the media, our watchdogs, have had their fingers burned in court.
But the banks have always been considered safe; even if their profits looked huge we knew they were legitimate. We used to be advised to get ourselves solid jobs for life with one of the banks.
We knew our savings would be looked after, and that they would grow, slowly but steadily. They were solid, conservative and dependable. National Irish Bank didn't have the pedigree that went with the age of AIB or Bank of Ireland but it was a bank. You could bank on it.
During the late '80s and early '90s there was a spate of attacks on older people all over the country. They were targeted because they were soft targets and some of them didn't trust banks. Their savings were concealed in their homes.
Politicians across the board, myself included, urged them to take their money from under the mattress or out of the shoe box and put it into a nice, safe, bank. Now mattresses are beginning to look like a sensible investment option.
It is not just National Irish Bank that has been damaged by the latest batch of revelations. One of the first actions taken after RTE broke the story was for officials to be sent into branches of all of the banks to carry out spot checks.
It is arguable that this was an over-reaction - the equivalent of finding one supermarket selling mouldy bread and sending auditors into shops of every chain. That wasn't how the public viewed it, though.
Because we've lived through so many scandals we've become used to them. Or at least used to dealing with them. Once one politician, one journalist or one banker gets caught out we automatically move the whole group into the "dodgy" category. Or worse.
For so long priests were the paragons of virtue, the yardstick we would measure our own conduct by. Eamonn Casey was found out. And then the stories of abuse started to circulate. And even though the number of priests involved in these obscenities was minute, they all got tarred with that brush.
For the priesthood the tarring process took some time. Now our trust has become so fragile that one solid scandal will result in an almost instantaneous loss of faith across the board.
A friend of mine was down at his local golf club the weekend after the news of NIB's corporate theft broke. There he ran into the manager of the local NIB branch - a man whose conduct and character had always been beyond reproach. They got to talking about what had happened.
The manager explained how horrified he had been by the story. And then he confessed that he had considered avoiding his weekly trip to the golf club because he was worried about the reaction he might receive there.
He knew he would be meeting friends of his. He knew they would know that just because some branches had been exposed there was no reason to suspect him. And yet he believed he would suffer a form of guilt by employment.
As it turned out he was partially wrong. His business friends stuck by him. But anyone that he meets for the first time who discovers whom he works for will perceive him differently than they would have done a few months ago.
That this man, and every other bank manager, has to deal with this impediment because of the actions of a few is worrying. The principle that everyone is innocent until proven guilty has been eroded. Now you're innocent until proven associated. Or, worse, you're innocent until misrepresented.
Precisely this happened to an old friend of mine when the first part of the NIB scandal broke. Reports appeared in relation to the Clerical Medical funds that were supposedly being used to help investors evade paying tax.
Two days after the story appeared, and before anything had been proven, the Minister for Finance, Charlie McCreevy, was interviewed about it. His reaction, at the time, was appropriately cautious. Accusations had been made but no one had yet been found guilty and the evidence was still fragmentary.
He did, however, re-emphasise his long-standing conviction that people who evade tax are stealing.
Three weeks later RTE's Prime Time ran another instalment of the offshore investment story. The evidence amassed was stronger and more damning. By now it was clear that something at least unethical and probably illegal had happened.
During the course of that programme RTE used some of the interview the Minister had given three weeks earlier. It did not indicate that the footage was old, so we all assumed the interview had happened that day or in the last couple of days at worst.
They did not ask the Minister for another interview even though the situation had changed substantially. His comments were no longer appropriate and those watching the programme were left with no option but to assume the Minister was not taking the matter seriously.
The following day, on Morning Ireland, Labour's Finance spokesman, Derek McDowell, pointed out this apparently uncaring attitude and by the end of the day Charlie McCreevy was found guilty as charged.
I'm sorry for Charlie but I'm far more worried for the rest of us. He has a whole public relations department whose job it is to prevent these misunderstandings or to repair the damage when they happen. We, the public, have no such protection.