Professor Patrick Honohan:

I absolutely agree. At the same time, however, to understand why that happened one has to have regard for the huge tax revenues coming in to the Government which allowed it to lower tax rates and hire more people, and the boom in construction. There were positive sides. I agree that it was not good and that it ended up in a very bad situation but at the time there were actual short-term benefits to which more attention was paid than the vague idea that everything would go wrong.