Quinn insists he is a 'victim'

Paul Neilan

Beleaguered former billionaire Sean Quinn was an outspoken guest of honour at the launch of the Ballinamore Family Festival in Co Leitrim on Sunday, and the Fermanagh man was more than forthright in front of an adoring local audience.
The former Quinn Group chief was due on stage in the shadow of St Patrick’s Church on the town’s High Street at 4pm, but, like any showman, he kept his public waiting.
In the intervening delay, balloons escaped tethering, children were ice-creamed, Creedence Clearwater Revival were on about back doors, the hurling was half-watched from smoky doorways, barking dogs were told to whist and pints were sank on the thronged pavement in front of Bobby Joe’s, Shortt’s, Kavanagh’s, Pat Joe’s... and singer Mick Flavin’s tour van.
The week-long festival had come for the 47th time and brought with it Ireland’s once-richest man.
Looking healthy and in his element, the 65-year-old, accompanied by his wife, Patricia, took to the stage and voiced a broadside at the past two governments, Anglo Irish Bank, the end of his tenure at Quinn Direct, the media - barring Ballinamore native and crime journalist Paul Williams - all to great hurrahs from the assembled 2,000-odd.
After the usual problems with the PA system and Flavin’s rousing Amhrán na bhFiann, under a stage bedecked in late-summer sunshine he wasted no time.

Robbed
After thanking organisers, he recounted distant memories of playing cards in the local hostelries.
“I used to go to Freddie’s, I used to get robbed of a Sunday night. But I only thought I got robbed... when you see what happened since.”
The gag went down a treat but was a marker for the theme of the next 20 minutes at the mic.
“We certainly made mistakes, lots of mistakes, there’s no way we should have, or I should have, invested so much money in Anglo Irish Bank, but I didn’t know what I was doing - I didn’t know what they were.
“But I do know there is a lot of blame attached over the last four or five years, who’s to blame?
“Successive Irish governments ran a company called Ireland Ltd. Their costs increased three times that of inflation. Now, in my limited experience in business no country can do it, it’s not feasible. One or two years, you might manage it, for fifteen years, it’s just not on, it won’t work.”
The mood turned serious, previously unnoticed clouds moved in.
“When the cows come home to roost, or birds, or whatever you want to call it, when the country got into trouble in 2007, 2008 the Irish Government were running a deficit of fifty per cent. I don’t know any other company in the world, nevermind country that would pay that out.
“Rather than blame themselves for what had happened over the last fifteen years, they blamed the victims,” he said to huge cheers.
“A lot of those victims are in this audience.” Bigger cheers.

Victim
“I know I was a victim, and so was my family. So then, they started putting people out of their houses, put people out of their businesses, and put guys in to run them. They wouldn’t run a chicken farm.
“Alan Shatter put in legislation saying that it was a criminal offence to withhold information regarding white-collar crime... I’ve an awful feeling there’s an awful lot of criminals up around in that Dublin area.” Biggest cheer of the day.
And so it went; the media, the board at Anglo, the regulator and more all got it in the neck.
“The full story hasn’t been told,” he said, as the rain came and, alas, it wasn’t to be told from the stage. Before taking his leave of the limelight he said he and his family would be vindicated and promised his return to the festival would be in better circumstances.
Applauded off, he went on a handshake-tour of the front row, as Flavin blasted out The Mighty Quinn. And then it was all over.
Beforehand, however, there were murmurings, away from the stage, about Quinn being chosen to open festivities at all - some saying political statements didn’t tally with the launch of a family festival.
That being so, there was no sense of personal ill will towards the man himself, and his speech seemed at least to win over some neutrals, even though the finer details of his financial shemozzle are yet to be untangled to the satisfaction of any onlooker.
After the main event, the number of those gathered was wondered aloud by one local stalwart holding court in the shade of Prior’s Pub, he was told in no uncertain terms: “Sure, it was bigger than when we had The Wolfe Tones!”