Professor Patrick Honohan:

As we saw in the end, it was very bad for the shareholders of Anglo Irish Bank and so forth. Some people benefited from it - I do not dispute that - but it was very bad for them in the end. Unrestrained use of depositors' funds for pumping up the property market is not a good thing and is not part of a well-functioning capitalist society.

That is why they are regulated, why they are supposed to be regulated.

Was there a conflict? Yes. There is a conflict, and that was supposed to have been resolved in favour of stability. What the legislation said is that you can only attend to promotion of the financial sector - or whatever it is called - as long as you have got the prudential or financial stability under control. However, that is a difficult thing to match, which is why I pressed very hard to ensure that promotion of the financial services sector was taken out of the legislation.