Kid gloves come off as gardaí give Seánie a lengthy grilling

After detention of former Anglo chief, more executives may be arrested

MANY A father has faced the unpleasant task of driving to the local Garda station to collect a son who has spent a night in the cells.

And the morning after many a chastened son has crumpled into the passenger seat and given his Da a grateful peck on the cheek for coming to his rescue.

In the forecourt of Bray Garda station yesterday, the roles were reversed.

It was 61-year-old Seán FitzPatrick who sank gratefully into the passenger seat following his release from custody. It was the father who planted a relieved kiss upon his son’s cheek after he arrived to drive him away from the scene of his humiliation.

The grilling of the former boss of Anglo Irish Bank was a textbook example of custodial slow cooking. Following the recipe to the letter, an interview team kept the heat on Seanie for the maximum amount of time allowed under law – lest anybody think the likes of FitzPatrick and the rest of his corporate compadres still get the gold-card, kid-glove treatment from the authorities.

(That sort of thing only happened in the bad old days of the boom, before the pig’s back became streaky bacon.)

It’s been a whirlwind week in the life of Seanie and the continuing investigation into the financial wicker men who helped turn Ireland into a basket case again.

Now for the conspiracy theory: In America at the weekend, the Taoiseach was asked by Fox News when there is going to be any arrests arising from the banking debacle here.

And lo! But isn’t Seán FitzPatrick, the most visible target for a half-broke and disapproving nation, hauled in by the rozzers? Nothing like a bit of creative thinking to pass the time while waiting outside a police station for an interrogation to finish.

And then there’s all manner of reports due at the end of this month into the particular abomination that was Anglo Irish Bank when the sainted Seanie was going through his gilded period. Advance reports are ominous. The taxpayer, it is predicted, will be digging deeper for yet more billions for the zombie bank.

On the plus side though, the forces of law and order have acted swiftly and publicly, er, this month.

Not only has Seanie been arrested and interviewed for the full 24 hours, but all day yesterday, those correspondents with direct lines to the top brass were confidently claiming that more arrests are imminent.

The floodgates are about to open, apparently.

But in the meantime, the presence of Seán in the local Garda station was more than enough to be getting on with.

The media presence around the perimeter swelled yesterday, relieving the small but gallant night shift of frozen journalists and camera crews.

One way or another – charged, discharged or papers to the DPP – Seán FitzPatrick would have to leave Bray Garda station by lunchtime.

A number of locals gathered to witness his departure, while stories circulated about the type of privations normally endured by a prisoner banged up for the night.

“He’s a detained man, which in my language, is a prisoner” explained Inspector Colm O’Malley, who emerged before lunch to reassure a deeply suspicious media that prisoner FitzPatrick would not be spirited out through some secret passageway to avoid further public opprobrium.

“He is treated the same as everybody else; he came in this way — all our prisoners are brought in this way and come out the same way. That’s the way it is.” “They’re only trying to do their jobs!” a lady with a dog loudly complained to her companion, taking offence on behalf of the media.

“Oh, special treatment for Seanie” snorted another. It wasn’t the case, but that’s the way people feel now about the former Anglo chief executive and his ilk.

And the time for Seanie’s release drew near.

A nine-year-old VW Golf was driven in by a young man wearing a baseball cap. FitzPatrick experts sprang to attention, like pointers tracking a falling widgeon.

It was a FitzPatrick car, they quivered, and the photographers screwed on their long lenses and climbed onto the wall.

Just before two o’clock, and just as Inspector O’Malley had called it, Seanie emerged.

He walked with purpose, swinging his arms the way politicians do as he bounded up the steps towards the waiting car. He gazed straight ahead as he moved for the open passenger door. Eyes down, he ducked inside.

To the disappointment of some, he looked tired, but not dishevelled. Always a noted natty dresser, Seanie wore a navy single-breasted blazer with gold anchor embossed buttons, over a blue and white striped shirt and a lavender silk tie. The blazer looked a little rumpled, his grey slacks missing their usual knife-crease.

As for the shoes, they were black tasselled slip-ons, which gave the lie to some salacious media reports that his shoelaces were confiscated at the cop shop counter.

After a two day stakeout, a few precious seconds of footage recorded the moment when a master of the Celtic universe was brought to Earth.

“Thank God they let him out before ‘Home and Away’,” sighed one of the onlookers, as she rang a friend to say she’d seen Sean Fitzpatrick leaving and went home to watch the telly.

Seanie wasn’t so fortunate. At least not immediately – by teatime, the nightshift posse at the gates of his Greystones home reported the Golf had returned, but with an empty seat on the passenger side.