Wasters

This is a book best read in small doses so that your indignation doesn't get eroded as you go. The catalogue of errors, incompetence and feather-bedding will annoy readers and further confirm the opinion the the public service is in need of a radical shake-up

Will add to momentum for real reform of the public service

Ross and Webb have done the state some service in writing Wasters ... essential reading ... will poison the ears of the vested interests

Shane Ross is an independent Senator, Sunday Independent business editor, and author of last year's number one bestseller The Bankers. Nick Webb is deputy business editor of the Sunday Independent.

During the years when all seemed well with the Irish economy, a scandal bloomed in front of our faces but went mostly unnoticed: the scandal of public waste. Vast overspending on infrastructure (including a number of white elephants), extravagant use of overpriced consultants, the creation of dozens of quangos whose primary purpose seemed to be jobs for the boys, the culture of junketry that took hold in the semi-state sector and the Oireachtas - these and other dubious practices flourished during the years when the state's coffers were overflowing. The insiders benefited; the rest of us got ripped off. 
 
Now, as the state scrambles to bail out the banks and to bring order to the shattered public finances by taking money out of the pockets of ordinary working people, Shane Ross and Nick Webb tell the story of the wasters: the people who perfected and benefited from the culture of cronyism and waste. Thanks in large part to Ross and Webb's journalism in the Sunday Independent exposing scandals in FAS and CIE, we already know part of this story. In Wasters, the authors show how wide and how deep the rot runs, and they show that every scandal has one thing in common: insiders profiting at the expense of ordinary people.

How the Banks Brought Ireland to Its Knees

The Bankers

Pleasingly indiscreet ... In particular it's his anecdotes about politics and business that ... differentiate it from the other chronicles of the collapse of the boom.

A hugely entertaining writer ... this is a serious book that is never boring, an engaging, personal account of the most tumultuous period in Ireland's economic history.

The book is littered with "you couldn't make it up" stories and gems. For anyone who really wants to know what happened, who let it happen, and how deep the rot really goes, this is a must.

Read this super book. Cry, get mad and get even.

Shane Ross is Business Editor of the Sunday Independent and an independent member of the Irish Senate.

As recently as 2007, the Irish economy was still booming and the state coffers overflowing; by the end of 2008, the state faces an unprecedented crisis. The story of the Irish banking collapse is a tawdry tale of collusion, back-scratching and denial among bankers, developers, regulators and politicians. 
 
This is the story Shane Ross - independent Senator, long-time champion of citizens against misbehaving corporations, and Journalist of the Year 2009 - tells in The Bankers, going behind the scenes and the headlines to explain what happened, how it happened and who made it happen. They're all here: Sean FitzPatrick, Michael Fingleton and the other bank bosses; Patrick Neary and his colleagues in Ireland's failed regulatory apparatus; the property developers, whose borrowings ruined the banks, and many of whom are now personally ruined; and the politicians, whose policies helped inflate the property bubble and who have allowed the banks to dictate the terms of their bail-out. Shane Ross knows the stories of these people and what they got up to, and in The Bankers he makes sense of a scandal that will haunt Ireland for years to come.

Shane Ross

Nick Webb

The people who helped wreck Ireland - and are still running the show

In March of 2011, the Irish people elected a new government. But how much has really changed? 
 
In The Untouchables, Shane Ross and Nick Webb shine a light into dark corners of official Ireland to show that the blame for running the country into the ground goes well beyond Fianna Fail, that a dismaying number of the people who should share the blame are still in situ, and that the bad old mindsets haven't been shifted. They detail the destructive culture of cronyism that afflicts so much of Irish life, from the boards of the leading companies to the appointment of judges. They trace how the same civil servants, estate agents and bankers who presided over the crash have in many cases been rewarded with important new jobs. They investigate the workings of the law firms, lobbyists and consultancies that seem to have their fingers in every pie. They name names, trace connections, and show how the untouchables managed to do so much damage, and how they have held on to power and influence in Ireland.

Shane Ross

The Untouchables

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