Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

I will approach the matter from a slightly different angle. In the ten years leading up to the crash, by common consent, house prices in Ireland escalated at a dizzying rate. During the period in question, they rose by perhaps the equivalent of the industrial wage each year.

The young generation of working people who were not buying to speculate but to have a roof over their heads found themselves facing mortgages of 40 years in duration, as opposed to the period faced by their parents, 20 years, because the price went so crazy. Is that massive price increase not attributable to excessive profit-taking, with no concern for the social downside for the people forced to put a roof over their heads? In that regard, Mr. Nyberg had a unique opportunity to assess the mindset of people and institutions that were central to the property market. He had the opportunity to speak to 140 of them. He spoke to those who winded themselves blowing up the bubble, he spoke to those who should have been elbowing the bubble blowers in the ribs to restrain them but who did not, and he spoke to others. In the private conversations, did any of them unburden themselves of any uneasy feelings that, while they were making massive profits for their institutions at the time in question, this came at a huge cost to certain individuals, such as workers trying to buy a home?