Banks have turned us into a Nama republic.

Byline: Pat Flanagan 

WHAT'S the difference between a fat cat banker and a prostitute? You can sometimes trust a prostitute and they sometimes have a conscience.

It's worth bearing that in mind as it appears we are stuck with Nama and are about to hand over EUR54billion to the country's financial pimps.

Finance Minister Brian Lenihan is asking us to trust his judgment as he does a deal with a pack of bastards who would sell their mothers to the highest bidder.

I want to trust Brian, because if he is wrong, Ireland will become an economic wasteland.

But then I remember what he was saying 12 months ago and I get very, very worried.

Almost a year ago to the day, he reassured us that "regardless of what is happening internationally, there is no danger of a run on the Irish banks".

That was on September 20, 2008 and he was so confident that the likes of Seanie FitzPatrick were doing a great job that on that same day he added: "The Government is confident about the strength and resilience of the Irish financial system." No problem there then.

Unfortunately, nine days later on the country's top bankers were in his office to break the bad news. At that famous midnight meeting Brian must have realised he had been conned by the banksters who had been claiming they were as fit as financial fleas when they were riddled with corporate cancer.

But on their deathbed, they put a gun to his head and warned the entire Irish banking system would collapse the next day if he didn't bail them out with more than EUR400,000million of taxpayers' money.

A year on Mr Lenihan is pointing that gun at the public's head with a similar warning that if the Nama bill is not passed we are all doomed.

We are being told that if every household in the country pays the banks EUR34,000 they might start lending again.

But the money monsters have given not the slightest commitment they will lend a cent if they get the public's cash.

It's hard to get your head around the figures involved so I'll type it out in words. The banks are getting fifty-four thousand million euros of your money and they are not required to do a thing in return.

But it gets better...if you are a banker.

That's right, Mr Lenihan has admitted he's paying EUR7,000million over the odds. Is it any wonder their share prices went through the roof yesterday? So what are the bankers going to do with all your cash? It would be nice to think they would start lending out again so businesses could expand and take on more workers, but don't hold your breath.

We must remember that the banks borrowed the cash to lend to the builders on the money markets so the first thing they'll do is pay it back to the international loan sharks.

Besides, it will be the middle of next year before all the toxic loans are cleared off the bank's books so there will be no flood of money and no jobs bonanza for at least another 12 months.

Could the Minister not spare a fraction of the cash going to the bankers for work job-creating programmes? Could we not follow the example of Finland, which suffered a similar economic disaster but invested heavily in mobile phone technology and now has Nokia to show for it.

The unholy trinity of the bankers, builders and developers - which has led to Nama - has still not been broken and there is every danger that the mistakes of the past will be repeated.

In the last few weeks we have seen how insolvent Anglo Irish Bank was offering bankrupt builder Liam Carroll more than EUR60million at a time when firms were going out of business because they couldn't get credit.

But what are we going to build? More roads? Do we need new highways to connect the economic ghost towns on the east coast with the unemployment blackspots in the Midlands? Do we need more hospitals when the HSE is closing down wards and slashing services because there's no money to pay doctors and nurses? And there's definitely no need for more schools as Education Minister Batt O'Keeffe is cutting teacher numbers, forcing children into ever bigger classes.

When Mr Lenihan is trying to sell Nama, I can't help think that this time last year he was taking advice from the likes of FitzPatrick and "Fingers" Fingleton.

Before he hands over our money to the fat cats Mr Lenihan would do well to heed the words of historian Carroll Quigley who warned: "History shows the advice given to governments by bankers, like the advice they gave to industrialists, was consistently good for bankers, but was often disastrous for governments, businessmen, and the people generally."

The 440,000 on the dole know exactly what he means.