The moneyman cometh

Short, bespectacled and conservatively dressed, Eddie Hobbs seems an unlikely celebrity. But although the 44-year-old Corkonian claims to detest the term, that’s exactly what he is. Even the cab driver who takes me out to the Dublin Airport Great Southern to meet him is a big fan of Ireland’s most famous financial consultant.

“I think he’s bleedin’ brilliant!” he tells me. “The whole country’s been getting robbed for years and he was the first one to really come out and show these wankers in the banks and insurance companies up for what they are!”
(Needless to say, for all of his campaigning for consumers’ rights, Hobbs never took on the taxi industry.)
Although well-known and much feared as a whistleblower and agitator within the financial services and insurance industries for many years, it wasn’t really until 2002, when he presented the RTÉ programme Show Me The Money – which saw him helping various ordinary people how to manage and improve their personal finances – that he began to build a serious public profile.
That burgeoning profile blossomed into full scale celebrity with his hugely successful show Rip Off Republic in 2005. This writer left Ireland early in 2005 with only the vaguest idea of who Hobbs was. By the time I returned in February 2006, the man was a bona fide legend – with bestselling books and DVDs to prove it.
His meteoric rise as champion of the little people hasn’t been without its controversies. Back in the early 1990’s, Hobbs was a senior manager in the financial services firm Taylor Asset Management, which went belly-up when its founder Tony Taylor absconded to the UK following the theft of clients’ funds.
While Hobbs was never implicated in any wrongdoing, his former employer (whom Hobbs helped send to prison) has been putting the bitter word out about him in the media ever since his release from jail. While most media outlets ignored the story, in September 2005 an entire print-run of Vincent Browne’s Village magazine had to be pulped after Hobbs threatened legal action over their cover story on him. There’s also been a minor spat over his refusal to appear on the Late Late Show.
Although his most recent TV venture 30 Things To Do With Your SSIA was mostly critically panned, with a series of public lectures planned for 2007 and a new TV series in the pipeline, chances are Eddie Hobbs won’t be going away anytime soon.

Olaf Tyaransen: I know you live in Kildare these days, but did you live in Cork for most of your life?
Eddie Hobbs: No, no, no. I emigrated from Cork and got the passport stamped around 1984 or ’85. I moved to Dublin and lived in Dublin city around the Monkstown-Clonskeagh area for about 10 years, and then we moved to the Curragh when the family started [Hobbs is the father of four children]. And so I spent 10 years in Dublin, and I’ve now been a little over 10 years in Kildare.
Did you study as an accountant?
No, I didn’t. I started to work when I was 16. Just straight out of Leaving Cert. I got the Leaving Cert and I wanted to work. You know, I wasn’t going to go to college. My father was quite sick. The younger lads went to college and became electrical engineers. I just went to work. I started in the insurance business – just general insurance – and then I moved into the life insurance end. I did a diploma in accounting and finance at night – I did financial planning exams and a financial planning diploma at night. So the last bloody exam I did was back in the late ‘80s.
Were you a thrifty young fella?
No, I don’t think so. Well, you see, a lot of that is television image, you know. I would’ve been a product of my time.
What? No money?
Well, no access to private credit. Had we had so, we might have committed a lot of the indulgences that the current generation are committing. And they’re sick of hearing older people talking about them not understanding what it was like to have a bad year economically. I remember the first 15 years of my working life, it was recession, recession, recession. Every year we were in a recession. Sure, we didn’t know what it was like not to have a recession. As far as I was concerned, that was life. But people look back on the 1970s and ‘80s and they say it was bad times. But it was great times too. People had time for each other.
Because they were all on the dole!
Yeah! But people had time, too. The pace wasn’t as frenetic. Now, modern Ireland is a much better place and I much prefer it – obviously; who wouldn’t? – but it brings its own problems. And one of those is just that we’re all running around – including housewives and kids! The pace is like frenetic. Even children hardly have time to sit down and play. They’re being moved from one thing to another. And so it’ll be interesting in a few years to just look back and really measure how much progress we’ve made. Now, we’ve made a huge amount of progress, but I think it’s a lot less than we’d care to admit. But maybe I’m getting a bit philosophical there a bit early.
You became a pretty big media star in 2005, but you’d done a fair bit of media work before that, hadn’t you?
Well, you see these words knock around like ‘financial guru’, which I hate, and ‘celebrity’, which I hate. I had been consumer campaigning since 1991 or 1992 – in and out of different debates, writing reports, taking on the vested interests within the insurance industry, in particular, and also in banking.
You were regarded as a bit of a whistleblower…
Yeah, yeah, I suppose there were a lot of things along the route map that a lot of people in the financial services industry would know well – and even outside it people might have fuzzy memories of. But taking down the endowment mortgage industry was the first major foray. And then I also took down the Irish Insurance Federation Commissions Agreement with an action under competition law that was successful. That was in the mid-1990s. And I was involved in campaigning against the merger of AIB and Bank of Ireland’s IT function, which I felt was a precursor to a full merger. And that campaigning went on in Brussels, because a lot of the local people thought it was a great idea. It would have been a dreadful idea.
And there were all sorts of skirmishes along the way. I was involved as well and had a lot of input, through the Consumer Association, into the formation of a financial regulator. And the whole [Tony] Taylor story along the route, of course, taught me an awful lot. So I tried to put that to good use. The financial regulator is now on site. So my requirement to be a financial consumer advocate fell away then to a large degree. So when I run across things now, I report them to the financial regulator and I know they’re going to be dealt with. Now they mightn’t be dealt with the way I’d like them to be dealt with, but they’re being dealt with. And that has been a huge development.
Okay, but Rip Off Republic is still where most people first heard of you.
Well, I did Show Me The Money for three years. But I always wanted to do Rip Off Republic. I always wanted to put my understanding to good use. All the pieces of the jigsaw were there. I suppose what Rip Off Republic was doing was it was showing people why to a large degree the cost of living in Ireland is so insanely high. And it was showing why it’s artificially high – because of the viral effect of development land costs feeding through everything. Why that happens, where the power is – real power – and which really exposes the, as I call them, the Dark Angels of business or the Dark Angels of politics. Now all of that was out there in the ether. But they were largely business stories, they were ‘paper of record’ type stories, so it wasn’t really hitting the guy who picked up The Star and just read the sports, and wouldn’t ever really read a business story unless there was a good looking headline or something like that in it. And television is that way of doing it, so I tried to stitch together my analysis in a really compelling way. And really it was getting at the power.
You know, I feel there’s three areas of the economy. The first area is the new economy which is tremendously exciting and energetic and hugely competitive and very good at exporting because it’s fit and lean. And that’s the economy we’ve created in the last 10 or 15 years. Sitting behind that is the second economy, which are the old professions – the dentists, the doctors, the lawyers. All restrictive practices, no reform, making huge profits because the demand is rising but the supply is limited and they are really sitting on these golden eggs. And I wanted to stitch that in.
And then, of course, behind that again is the medieval public sector which we have. It doesn’t seem to matter how much money we throw at it – we get no great improvement. And that has to do with power again. I mean, the biggest power block in the country are the public service unions. And we’ve created a monster through the partnership agreement, which we needed at the time. And looking back at those type of things, you’d say that it was right at the time. The partnership agreement was one of the major foundation stones of the Tiger economy. But we’ve created a monster. And we now have a situation where the public sector is grossly overpaid for the value we get. And benchmarking is extortion of the public purse.
Would you consider yourself to be anti-state?
Anti-state? Oh no, I wouldn’t think so.
Well, you’re a free-marketer…
No, I wouldn’t say so. I’d be very strong on social thinking. I just believe that if the first economy is vibrant and thriving and competitive then it’s carrying everybody else. And that’s unfair. It’s socially unfair. And inequitable. So to me, it’s not a question of money, it’s a question of equality of environment. It’s not just a philosophy. So I believe, for example, that the public sector should get the money it’s getting, but...
Deliver more for it.
Not deliver it in the form of salary increases. Pay it in the form of cash bonuses. Benchmarking should be cash bonuses, paid through the public sector. So in the health service, let’s say the benchmarking bill for the public service is going to be ¤800 million for the year. You give it to the managers and supervisors and say, “Pay that as a cash bonus to your best people.” Now you’ve got competition within the public sector for the bonus at the end of the year. Which is precisely what happens in the private sector. So I’m not anti-state, I’m saying the model is wrong. This idea of paying everybody for no identifiable increases in performance is, in engineering terms, guaranteed to create mediocrity.
Well, we don’t exactly live in a meritocracy, do we?
No, we don’t. It’s not perfect. But then there’s no perfect model.
What did you think of Sean Haughey’s ministerial appointment?
Em… ha, ha! I tend not to really get too concerned about such a minor thing as that. But I would have had a view that it was a bad decision to afford Charlie Haughey a state funeral. I think the vast majority of people thought that, but didn’t want to say so publicly. The people that were talking publicly were the people that were pro.
But I don’t want to single Haughey out because there’s been others as well. But people would say, “Look at the good things he did.” But we paid for that. We paid him a good salary to do that. We paid for it and that’s what we got. Now you can take the same warped thinking to a mafia warlord in the Bronx in New York. You can say, “Look at the good the man did.” But of course people do good! They’re human beings! But look at the damage he did!
And Haughey generated a culture of ambivalence that still exists today towards right and wrong. Of course, he wasn’t alone. We’d Burke. And Lawlor was his driver. And now you’re not allowed say a bad thing about Lawlor because he was killed in a car crash in Moscow. So we can’t talk about that? Bollox!
Did you think Ahern should have resigned over the Manchester payments?
No, I don’t think so. But my own view, and I’ve said it before, is that he’s past his sell-by date. There’s big challenges ahead of us, we have to reform the public sector. That means that some politician is gonna have to take on that big power block – really take it on and reform it. That means taking on some of the most powerful forces in the state. Like who runs the government? The civil service. That needs positive reform and it’s certainly not gonna happen under the current leadership. So I’d like to see him move on for that reason.
In terms of the Manchester payments and all of that, it’s case not proven against Ahern. Rather than guilty or innocent.
But if it was England, he’d have been forced to resign immediately!
I know, I know.
In China, he’d probably have been shot!
Yeah! [laughs] I know! It just seems to me that there’s no case where he’s gained personally. There’s no obvious trappings of wealth.
Well, surely he gained all the money he was given.
Yeah, he did. I think Pat Rabbitte summed it up brilliantly. He got gifts from total strangers and loans from his friends. I felt very iffy about it. You could take a very black and white attitude – which is the easy one to take – which is where the Irish Times were going with it. But I’d say that he just about got away with it on the basis of his track record, but if one more thing comes out the public will turn on him. I don’t think the public were ready to do so. When they look at the likes of Ray Burke, Lawlor, Pee Flynn, Haughey, they see different people.
The other thing as well, from somebody who has been involved in television – and obviously Rip Off Republic was appealing to intelligence levels as well – I was one of the people who believes that the viewer or the reader’s intelligence is always hugely underestimated by the media. Particularly the TV media. They’re always dumbing things down and simplifying stuff. But people read between the lines very well. And I don’t think they were ready to ditch Bertie Ahern. There was a lot of spinning around it, sure, but the public knows that too. They don’t need to be told.
Village magazine had a serious go at you last year over the whole Tony Taylor episode – or tried to, at least. Did you feel that was unfair?
Well, it’s a great mistake when you engage with the media to think in terms of fair or unfair. You’re starting from the wrong point. There was, I am told, a very significant attempt around the time of Rip Off Republic, and the kneejerk reaction to it, to basically throw anything at me. And I’d expected Taylor to come out of the woodwork. It was already there. He’d already been throwing all of this guff around anyway!
I mean, he’d given stuff to everybody. Every newspaper, TV station, radio station, senior politician, CEOs of major businesses – they were all given the same documentation. But what was extraordinary is that even the most aggressive tabloid in the country didn’t bother with it, saw it for what it was. But just one or two journalists decided to run with it. That’s the way the media works. And they ran with it. And what happened, happened. And it was uncomfortable, but it was expected. I’m human like anybody. But you generate a thick skin. Not because you want to, but if it keeps happening to you, you just have to.
And of course Village magazine… Vincent Browne, whom I’ve met since, I think... I mean, we didn’t really talk about that. I can’t speak for him, but... like, ‘twas all just guff. I don’t want to criticise Village magazine or Vincent Browne. I think they know precisely what happened themselves.
The Irish Times, strangely, ran some of Taylor’s stuff, which was extraordinary. The irony is that all of that has been rejected by various... That was 10 years ago, you know. Like, how many times does that stuff have to be gone over? There’s been about six different agencies have looked at this. How many times does it have to happen? The last one was the financial regulator, who rejected it. Of course, that didn’t become a media story at all!
But one of the great difficulties I have in that case is that I can’t really deal with it properly until the liquidation process is out of the way. The liquidation process is a legal process – and it’s now going into its 11th year. And I can’t comment on something that’s before the courts. I’d love to. And by the way, I will – in due course I’ll comment on it comprehensively. But at the moment I have to talk around the issue.
Do you think that Irish society has a begrudging mentality?
I think it was Professor Lee who said that in a small segment of society, one man’s gain is seen as another man’s loss. And that was definitely the case when you didn’t have a lot of economic growth and not a lot of wealth being created. That’s changing. But yeah, unfortunately begrudgery is still very much part of the Irish character – and we all suffer from it.
Given the enormous size of the market, what’s your opinion on the legalisation of drugs like marijuana and cocaine?
I don’t know. I have to tell you that it’s an area I’m not an expert on. I’ve never been a drug user myself. I never got into cannabis or any of that stuff.
Surely cocaine would be a much-used drug in the financial services industry?
It would. Maybe it would. But I’ve never actually seen it. I’ve seen it on television and that’s about it. I’m a complete innocent. Alcohol is my drug of choice and that does me. But I read about the stuff, and it’s very hard to have a clear opinion on it because some very bright people say we should attempt to legalise certain types of drugs. And other very bright people say it’s the worst thing we could possibly do.
But just from an economic point of view…
If it was purely an economic argument, of course you would say that you would. Particularly for the hard edge of the market – the heavy heroin users and so on – it would certainly take away the economic thrust behind it. But is that really the problem? And the problem is, it seems to me, that we have failed... So have many other societies but particularly Irish society, which is on a small island where we all know each other – that’s why we don’t complain enough, you know. It’s a village. That’s why Village is called Village magazine! But it’s extraordinary that we haven’t managed to control the crime rate. Notwithstanding the drug side of it, we have a booming economy. God knows what it’d be like if unemployment was 20%! I mean, this place would be like the wild west!
We’ve got full employment and yet we have serious crime. Now I’m not expert enough to comment in any great detail on why that is. The Gardai seem to say that it’s the judicial system. The bleeding hearts say... actually, not the bleeding hearts, the civil rights people go on about individual civil rights, and yet we see time and time again that the legal system tends to be skewed in favour of the criminal, because of consistent case law built up over the years. The victim doesn’t have enough power in the system. We don’t seem to have enough prison spaces to deal with the problem that we have so we’ve a revolving door. And it seems to be back down to the genetic problem we have of being able to join up the dots. Plan! Long-term planning! Sure all of this is foreseeable.
I remember back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, we were talking about the same thing. Not enough prison space. Here we are, with the economy booming, we still don’t have enough prison spaces.
Why do you think that is?
I’ve often thought about this. You know, what is it about us and our inability to plan? Long term planning. And I actually think it’s a problem for the Celts. It’s a vision thing. And I often think that the only incident that I can find which would explain it is the only major battle we won – in 1014. And had Brian Boru lost the battle of Clontarf, we’d probably have a public transport system, we’d probably have a public health service, and we’d probably have the crime situation under control.
Should prostitution be legalised?
Prostitution is a different thing from drugs. I wouldn’t have any difficulty with prostitution being legalised. Prostitution isn’t doing any great harm. But prostitution made illegal is harmful, because it’s exposing women to forces and dangers that they needn’t be exposed to. We’re very conflicted in the west about this – it’s legal in some countries and illegal in others. But take it with a pinch of salt. Even in eastern countries it’s just regarded as ‘what’s the big deal?’ And it acts maybe as a safety valve for other things. So I wouldn’t have any difficulty at all in legalising prostitution. Nothing to do with economics. More, kind of like, let’s grow up. You know.
What’s the story with you and Pat Kenny?
Oh no! [Laughs] We’re not gonna go into all that Late Late Show stuff again, are we? There’s nothing personal.
Even so, did you snigger to yourself when that guy invaded the stage the other week?M/b>
No, I didn’t see it. I don’t watch the Late Late. I would regard watching any kind of television on a Friday night as a failure. What am I doing? I’d be reading a book or I’d be out. I certainly wouldn’t be watching the Late Late anyway! I’d watch the Tubridy Show if I was in on a Saturday. I actually like that show, I think there’s a bit of energy in it. But it’s a different type of show.
But the week the Village magazine came out and all the rest of it was going on, I had given it in writing to the Late Late that I wasn’t going on. They kept advertising that I was. Then they did something that crossed the line with me. I’m very strong on maintaining privacy in my private life. There’s nothing other than family and kids. So the idea of any show having a car outside my home to whisk me off – publicly, as a public stunt for a television programme – crossed the line.
How do you mean? They had a car parked outside your house on the night?
Yeah.
Did they have a camera?
I don’t know. The opening of the show was changed. There was interference between senior management in RTÉ and the Late Late. The opening of the show was changed. But there was to be a car outside my house according to media reports – which has never been denied. And that was after several ads saying I was coming on when I had clearly given it in writing that I wasn’t.
What I found amusing is that I had done interviews with tough journalists throughout that week. And I mean tough. Well able to beat you up when they wanted to. I’m talking about political correspondents for all of the newspapers, the tabloids, the radio stations. Matt Cooper, Eamon Dunphy, Marian Finucane, Maeve Prenderville. And then the political correspondents of all of the major newspapers. I talked to them all in detail – whatever they wanted. And then I was accused of not having the courage to come on to talk to Pat Kenny. You know, the guy that was up there, way above everybody else in terms of their ability to analyse an issue. Load of nonsense!
Who do you most respect in the Irish media?
Well, I would be a talk radio person. I actually think that Kenny is brilliant on the radio. I listen to him avidly and when he gets into business or technical type stories, he clearly gets into his groove. When he gets into the light entertainment stuff, as he does on television, it’s not his groove. It must make him unhappy because it’s not where he’s comfortable.
I enjoy Vincent Browne an awful lot. I’d be driving late at night a lot and, when I’m on a long journey home, I just love listening to Browne’s show. Because he can be outrageous sometimes and he can be a boor and he’ll interfere with people, but he does have a cut about him. Now, when you know Vincent’s story, you have to take a lot of it with a grain of salt. But it’s entertaining and it’s highly informative.
Are you religious?
Ha, ha! I’ve never been asked that question before, and I’ll have to be truthful and say that I’m not – no. I gave up on Catholicism from a very early age, just for thinking reasons. It just didn’t seem to make a lot of sense to me. Later on, as I was reading early history, it made even less sense. I have very mixed views – like, I’m very mixed up on it – but I’m not a practising Catholic.
But I’m not an atheist at all! Funnily enough, despite my scepticism of much of Catholicism... When you look at celibacy, for example. That’s just about land. Confession. Let’s find out what people are thinking during the Reformation.
Speaking of land owned by the Catholic church, do you think the deal Michael Woods did over the payouts for clerical abuse was a good one?
No, of course not. No, no, no, no, no, no. But you asked me a spiritual question so can we just park that for a second? Funnily enough, even though I’m not a practicing Roman Catholic, the presence of the Virgin Mary is very, very powerful for me. I mightn’t go to church, but if I felt like... you might find me with a set of rosary beads, talking to her. I feel she’s there – or something’s there.
Was your family upbringing religious?
We went to mass – we were driven there and back. I did the lent thing a few times.
But if you were in any way challenging or thinking, it was very, very hard to sit and listen to some of the sermons that were going on in the ‘70s and ‘80s. They were completely conflicted. And also I would have grown up in a school environment where there was obvious evidence in hindsight of very peculiar teachers.
And I would’ve been part of the punk generation. In my time, punk had just started so there was a bit of that going on as well. And maybe that helped as well. It was very hard to be conservative.
What kind of music do you like?
I’m not big into music and I never was. If I was travelling, I’d happily put on a three-hour BBC production of Macbeth and listen to it for three hours driving. Now my family would ban me, but if I was on my own I’d listen to an anthology of poetry by Richard Burton and be absolutely locked in his voice and his delivery of a whole range of different quotes. I’d listen to Leonard Cohen avidly. I’d be listening to the lyrics. Eminem is somebody I’d listen to – again because of the lyrics. I’d listen to Madness – I’m a big Madness fan. But I wouldn’t be going out buying music, unless I’d lost something I’d already been listening to.
Did you have a rebellious phase in your youth?
Oh Jasus, I did, yeah. I did of course! I mean, every teenager is rebellious but, in my case, it was much younger. I think I was a teenager when I was aged between three and nine. I sowed my wild oats quite early. I did crazy things. Not enough to get me into very serious trouble, but lots of trouble.
What sort of trouble?
Ah, don’t talk to me! You’d have to ask my mother that! I remember I hijacked a bus when I was three-and-a-half or four. The number 14 was a very famous bus in Cork. It was stopped on top of a hill which goes down into where St. Finbar’s cathedral is. And the bus driver had got out. All the kids were on the bus along with the minders. And in those days, in the old buses, there was a little hatch that you could open and shut by the driver’s seat. I crawled through there. I remember a big steering wheel and a big lever. Of course, it was the handbrake but I didn’t know what it was. So I took the handbrake off and the bus rolled down the hill with a load of kids in the back.
Did it crash?
Oh yeah. It hit a kerb at the end of the hill. Gently! It sounds dramatic, but it wasn’t really.
With money being the new religion in Ireland, would that make you the new Jesus Christ?
Oh no it wouldn’t! Ha, ha! No! No, actually, it’s something I feel very strongly about and I talk about it quite often. And audiences are surprised. I actually think that we’ve got it all wrong. That in the destruction of the three main pillars we had – religious pillars were destroyed through paedophilia; the political pillar destroyed itself through the tribunals and corruption; and of course the banking pillar destroyed itself as well through the revelations in banking. But we kind of grew out of it, but shattered it as we did. Then all this wealth arrived. And then during the dotcom era, you’d open up the Business Post every Sunday and there was another story about somebody who started out in a fleapit, and then they worked from the garage, and then they were a multi-millionaire. That gave us benchmarking. Everybody in the private sector was suddenly gonna make a fortune. That’s how it started. It started with envy.
The new icons then became the money-makers. And we just couldn’t get enough of Denis O’Brien and Smurfitt and all these businesspeople. And we still laud these money-makers, write big profiles on them and all that. And that’s good in promoting a certain entrepreneurial drive, which was sadly lacking in Ireland. But they became the Irish icons. Property! You wanna stop a dinner party now, you talk property and you’ve got silence. If the hostess is having sex with someone’s husband and you say it, that won’t stop the dinner party at all. But if you mention property, you’ve got silence. It’s all about money now – and money-makers. And that really gets me going, because we’ve now elevated to the highest level of priority the achievement of material gain. And that’s a fundamental mistake by society – which it will counterbalance and learn in time. We all know it’s wrong, but we just can’t get off it at the moment.
Would you ever think of going into politics?
I keep being asked that question and I keep saying no. But nobody’s asked me why not. The problem with getting involved in politics today is that you don’t get involved in politics – your entire family gets drawn into it. So when, as inevitably will happen, the dark sides happen, the cut and thrust and the new media intrusiveness, the dangers are there. It’d be grand if I was single, and I didn’t have a wife and children, and I didn’t have a wider family who would get very hurt by seeing me getting beaten up periodically in the media. They get genuinely hurt by stuff already. If I was to get involved in politics, it would magnify. And I couldn’t put them through it.
As we go into 2007, do you think that this is a good time for young people to buy a house?
Well, the answer to that is that your home isn’t an investment. So the only question you wanna ask yourself if you’re gonna buy a home is can I afford the repayments? And if it’s absorbing less than a third of your net income, you can afford it. If it’s absorbing more than that, you’re getting into dangerous territory. If it’s more than 40%, you’ve got serious problems. If it’s gonna absorb more than 50% of your income then you’re a lunatic.
Do you have a motto in life?
I don’t have a particular motto, but I try and always take the view that the past is irrelevant and that the only thing that needs to be considered in terms of making decisions is the position today. In terms of decision-making, the past is entirely irrelevant. You can’t change the past. We all try to. When you try and change the past in your head, it makes you bitter. Because you go back and you’re saying, ‘If only I had done this, things would be better.’ You didn’t! Get over it! Get on with it! So you can only change the future.