There is little doubt, given the number of Brown Thomas bags Gerry Gannon loaded into his supersize Range Rover, that there is plenty of cheer in the Gannon family mansion this Christmas.

That massive vehicle, and the helicopter owned by Michael O'Flynn's company, the €600,000 Maybach that gets Treasury Holdings' Johnny Ronan about, as well as the various large Mercedes that featured in the Prime Time Investigates programme on developers' lifestyles, certainly guaranteed that there was no trudging about in wellies in the snow for these big beasts of Irish commerce.

The top 30 developers in this country are in debt to the tune of €27bn. That debt represents 40%of the loans in Nama. The debts of the top 10 alone total some €17bn, almost as much as the entire budget deficit for 2011.

Yet their golden lifestyles in the form of the mansions they live in and the cars they drive remain scarcely touched by the calamity that the loans they can no longer repay have visited on this country.

How hollow do finance minister Brian Lenihan's words that the state would "chase the developers to the end of the earth" sound? We now learn that almost all of the top 30 whose debts are in Nama, and therefore whose continuance in business is the gift of the taxpayer, have transferred many of their properties to their wives.

They may owe as much as €1bn-plus per man, but that has barely left a mark. Not for them the blighted lives of those who bought homes on ghost estates, the value of these houses a fraction of what they paid. Not for them to know what it means to struggle to pay a huge mortgage or in many cases, to be unable to do so because of the unemployment caused by the economic crash, itself directly caused by the risky business of banks and developers.

What is mystifying is the lack of any political response to this naked contempt for the authority of Nama and the benevolence of the taxpayer.

When Joan Burton brought up the subject of developers transferring assets to their spouses in the Dáil, Brian Lenihan barely masked his contempt when he replied he would be happy to pursue them should she provide the evidence.

As a barrister and minister for finance, he should have known the evidence was there, in the state's own Land Registry office. There lies the evidence of dozens of transfers of mansions, apartments, townhouses, and landbanks.

Nama's chairman Frank Daly and the minister insist that the helicopters, the large cars, the mansions and the yachts are not "appropriate". Yet last week on national television the evidence to the contrary was laid before our eyes.

Nama said it would pursue the transfers of valuable properties to wives through the courts. So far, it has reversed the transfers by three developers of €130m of property, which, as we all know, is chicken feed.

Just as was the case with the banks until the new Credit Institutions (Stabilisation) Bill was rushed through the Dáil on the orders of the IMF and EU, there is no appetite within government to take on those who caused the problems.

Even the architect of the Nama legislation, economist Dr Peter Bacon, is astonished at the softly, softly approach. Of course, it makes sense to forge a business relationship with some developers to extract the maximum return for the taxpayer. But even though Nama holds all the cards, there has never been any question that those who lead these companies should be told to stand down if they are not willing to cooperate fully and make way for new managers with a less pronounced sense of personal entitlement. As Peter Bacon put it, the developers need the same message belatedly given to the banks: "If you are not going to play the game our way, you are not in the game."

At this time of year, as a still deeply Christian country, we celebrate the birth of a child who, even for those who do not believe in his deity, is a moral leader for all time. Given the events of 2010, the Christian message of protecting the weak in the face of the injustice of the powerful has rarely resonated more strongly.

It's also a time when we reflect on past mistakes and search, in a spirit of family and community, for a means of renewal. President Mary McAleese, in her Christmas address, appealed to us all not to be "defined by the economic crisis" and to show the resilience, creativity and community that supported us so well in the past. Unfortunately, unlike in the past, that consensus no longer seems to exist. When the architects of the bust are too unwilling to share the real burden of rebuilding, to experience the "frugal comfort" that de Valera called upon in the '40s and '50s, it becomes impossible for citizens to believe renewal is possible.

And unlike a certain leader who confronted the money lenders in the temple, our own seem unwilling to have the courage to follow the example.

We wish all our readers a very Happy Christmas and we wish for better times in the coming year.