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

I have a general question first for the Governor. Some people would feel that in terms of a new report and indeed in other reports, in trying to get to this mystery of why there was not an intervention to stop the property bubble from being blown up, there is too much tiptoeing through the tulips and that we can get to a very fundamental reason. Is it the case that the property bubble was blown to extremes by this scramble for super profits by banks, developers and bondholders, that this is what the capitalist financial markets are all about, that this ideology is shared by Government, the majority of the Legislature in this State and by much of the media, and also that the regulatory authorities, most of whom came through that system, share that and that the prevailing spirit is, "Don't separate the lion from its prey. That is what they do. Let them at it"?