"Seán Fitzpatrick is regarded as one of the smartest and most intuitive people in Irish business. Could he not see that the general public might regard it as the height of arrogance to be airing his views only days after a near-collapse in banking?" Frank Lee

I nearly choked on my early morning coffee on Monday last. The Irish Times had a small story tucked away on the bottom of page 3 which dealt with the advice being offered by Seán Fitzpatrick, chairman of Anglo Irish Bank, to the government on how it should frame its budget. This was part of a speech Fitzpatrick delivered on the same day that he had been interviewed on the Marian Finucane show on RTE Radio 1, about the government's support of the six Irish-owned financial institutions.

Whatever about Fitzpatrick choosing to lead the post bail-out positioning of the banks, his decision to move on to the wider economic stage was amazing. The general public, many of whom have a jaundiced view of all bankers, may not have been surprised, but I was.

I have dealt with Sean Fitzpatrick professionally. I have met him socially a few times. He is smart and engaging. He is not at all arrogant. He was the one person in senior banking whom you would have thought would realise the enormity of what the government ws doing and be humbled by it. How, then, could someone with these qualities not see how idiotic it would appear were he to advise government on what to do in the budget?

Anglo Irish Bank's budgeting appears to have been less than perfect. Indeed, the proverbial hounds in the alleyways knew that, while there was deep concern about all the banks last Monday week, it was Anglo Irish that was on the precipice.

Whatever about how things may pan out in the months ahead, at that critical moment when the markets closed on Monday 29 September, it was Anglo Irish that gained most from the government's intervention before they reopened the next morning. All the more reason, then, for someone of Seán Fitzpatrick's smarts to think very carefully about any engagement in the public domain.

Fitzpatrick handled his Marian Finucane interview well. He is articulate and passionate, always a good advocate, and is generally pretty direct and honest in his dealings with the media. He addressed the problems thoroughly and took a degree of responsibility for the predicament in which the banks had placed the government. He also, wisely, stopped short of apologising, which would have been an inappropriate PR sop in the midst of a serious crisis. It was a pretty ballsy move to do the interview, and while it is not clear how the other banks felt about it, overall it may have helped rather than hindered their cause.

There can be no debate at all, however, on the wisdom of his speech later that day to a seminar in Co Wicklow. This betrayed a complete lack of judgement. Seán Fitzpatrick must have taken leave of his senses to think that, less than a week after government had saved Anglo, he should advise Brian Lenihan and Brian Cowen how to go about framing what may well prove to be the most important budget in the history of this state.

Interestingly, he saw fit to opine on this before knowing what the terms of the government's guarantee would be and how it might best be applied to Anglo Irish Bank. So whatever about making the speech six days after the government's commitment was offered, making it two days before you know at what cost was not particularly clever.

The other curious element was that none of his suggestions was particularly novel. I assume any government considering how best to protect our impressive record of inward investment would have considered a reduction in corporation tax. So I am sure no one in government needed his unsolicited advice.

Ironically, to have to consider it now, in the light of it being mooted publicly by the chairman of one of our banks, might just make it less compelling – unless of course government was to exclude the financial services sector, something this columnist would certainly favour.

Seán Fitzpatrick is regarded as one of the smartest and most intuitive people in Irish business. He is not given to pomposity. My limited interaction with him over the years supports that view. None of this is consistent with the stupidity of his speech in Wicklow. Why would he choose to advise government when he and his bank were on the brink of disaster before the government's intervention? Could he not see that the general public might regard it as the height of arrogance to be airing his views only days after a near-collapse in banking?

Let us give him the benefit of the doubt. Let us suppose that, when he offered advice to government at a time when Anglo was a supplicant of government, it was an aberration created by the pressure he was under. It is an important lesson that even the best people, with the sharpest instincts, can make very poor judgements in such circumstances.

Most of us can make poor judgements and deal with their consequences privately. Those with a public profile, no matter the circumstances and no matter their standing, need to think deeply about every public move before they make it. They need wise counsel beside them and they must share every nuance with those whose judgement they trust. Only then can they hope to avoid doing or saying something that would make them appear foolish. For the next few months or years, bankers everywhere please note.