gombeenism
gombeen

"Goodbye Gombeen Man", a Sunday Times headline from 1994, which was referred to in a more recent Guardian article.

"Mr Reynolds had objected to a 1994 Sunday Times article - headlined 'Goodbye gombeen man.

More generally, "gombeen" is now an adjective referring to all kinds of underhand or corrupt activities and to the mindset possessed by those engaged in such activities.

Aloysius "Gombeen" Mulcahy: Aged head of a powerful Catholic family, whose younger son Benedict is a government minister.

'From Gombeen to Gubeen: Tourism, Social Class and Cultural Identity in Ireland, 1949-1999'.

He follows Gombeen Murphy and Sir Richard Egan into the shadows of death with a technical tour de force of which I am frankly envious."

While the phrase "gombeen man" is almost always intended without any religious or ethnic context, it can be applied in relation to other groups such as, in this instance, a Jewish man:

The despised image of the gombeen as an usurious predator on the poor was immortalized in the poem The Gombeen Man by Irish poet Joseph Campbell:

Just make sure you get one when you lend one and if there's a bit you think you're really likely to want to quote from photocopy it first as there's always one gombeen who'll keep forgetting to bring back the book.