NO WORK of fiction could match the banking scandal leaked in the Anglo Irish tapes, says best-selling Irish author Sheila O’Flanagan.
But the scribe, who worked in finance for years before turning to the books, wasn’t shocked by the mocking conversations of former Anglo Irish Bank chief executive David Drumm and his executive John Bowe.
As Ireland teetered on the edge of a banking meltdown, their conversations were revealed by the Irish Independent and Sunday Independent over the past fortnight.
“The Anglo tapes..0MG.” the Dublin writer told the Irish Post this week.
“It’s a shocker but having worked in the environment, although I am horrified by the casual way in which they talk about fleecing the tax payer, and lying about circumstances of the bank, I am not at all surprised about the tone and the joking and alpha maleness of their conversation, because that is how they talk all the time.”
She added: “It’s part of the culture and was very much so when I worked in finance. Unfortunately even though people are horrified by it I honestly don’t think it has changed that much since I was there.”
Currently promoting her latest novel, Things We Never Say, released this month in Britain and marking the nineteenth instalment of the O’Flanagan collection, the writer feels the Anglo Irish fall out is one you couldn’t make up.
“If I sent this to my editor they would send it back and say it couldn’t be real,” she said.
“No matter what you write, no fiction could compare to the facts of what these people did. For Irish people generally its worse to hear as they did it with full knowledge of what they were doing and that has messed up a lot of people’s lives.”
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