Seanie the sleeveen is still top dog with the fat cat set

Date Published: {J}

Shed no tears for Seanie FitzPatrick, the disgraced banker who is apparently now eking out a living on €188 a month.

It’s not just that the rest of us who never enjoyed the high life in the first place will now spend the rest of our days contributing four cent out of every euro we pay in tax towards the bail-out of Anglo Irish Bank.

Fitzpatrick had the audacity to claim that he is surviving on a pittance because his investment property portfolio was under-performing – welcome to the real world mate; because of you, our houses aren’t worth half of what we paid for them either.

And at least Fitzie had the benefit of being able to sanction his own loans so that his house in Bray and apartments in Smithfield and Killiney might not have been subject to the sort of financial scrutiny that the rest of us mere mortals were dragged through.

In the statement to the High Court last week, FitzPatrick revealed he receives €3,693 per month net of tax, as payment from an Irish Life Annuity. But his submission showed that is virtually wiped out by the net loss of €3,505 per month he makes on these three properties.

The disgraced banker co-owns those properties and receives a rental income of more than €50,000 per year. But he told the court that when mortgage repayments and other overheads on the properties are taken into account he makes the net loss. That was how he came up with the monthly income figure of €188.

So here’s the solution, Fitzie – sell them for whatever you can manage and at least you won’t have to exist on bread and water any longer. Not until you’re behind bars anyway.

The former bank chief has debts of more than €145 million, compared with assets of just over €47 million – so let’s take the €47 million off him and call it a good start.

FitzPatrick’s assets also include property interests in Britain, France, Hungary, South Africa and the US. Let’s ensure he never sees the inside of them again and that he never receives a penny in rental income from them either.

That won’t happen of course because the sleeveen has reportedly shifted his assets into his wife’s name and she’s now worth more than €3 million after the carve-up – and Catriona FitzPatrick could be entitled to half of her husband’s €3.4m pension pot.

Creditors will also be unable to touch her interest – potentially worth as much as €2m – in at least five properties co-owned with her husband.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.