What do developers do when their empire crashes and the creditors move in to take charge of the much devalued assets? We have had a few to study. Each tries to retain as much of the spoils as possible vesting them in their family.

We had a classic example of this when Sean Dunne’s wife re-immerged this week as a skilled negotiator with considerable assets to her name. Some might see her husband’s hand in all this!

Sean, like some of his compatriots, has gone for bankruptcy in the hope that the courts will be more forgiving than his creditors. Apparently he has twice been able to avoid Irish bankruptcy proceedings being served on him in the USA where he now lives. This is understandable as our laws are more severe than whose in the UK or USA. It may not be quite so easy to prove that the USA was his principal business location. This was the hurdle which brought down some of his fellow developers when they tried to file for bankruptcy in the UK.

However the genius behind the re-development of the Jury’s hotel site at Ballsbridge will doubtless have found a way to authenticate his US credentials.

To be declared bankrupt and have the slate wiped clean is the failed developers dream. Of course the Court cannot make the mega-million debts disappear. They have to be picked up or rather thrust upon the “little people”. Some of them, it must be said, did rather well out of Sean’s big spending projects during the boom. However, for the vast majority, heavier taxation is their lot. As someone has said with more than a grain of truth, the only thing that “big people” need to keep going is a constant supply of “little people”!

What has the Bible to say to these things?

One of the problems of wealth is its addictive nature. When one well known millionaire was asked what is enough? He replied “After the next million!”

According to St Paul it’s the love of money that is the root of all kinds of evil that plunge men into ruin and destruction. This is written in the passage which states that, “godliness with contentment is great gain for we brought nothing into the world and can take nothing out of it” (1Timothy chapter 6).

This “godliness” which is identified with contentment is likened by St Paul to Jesus.

So if you want godliness, whether you are a developer or a taxpayer you need to know Him. “Great indeed is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory (1 Timothy chapter 3 verse 16).