Professor Patrick Honohan:

The guarantee is very specific. Guarantees do not protect poor people relative to rich people because rich people have more money. However, the attempt to stabilise the economy is an attempt which could help reduce the adverse distribution effects of a collapse in economic activity. Some crashes have affected the rich worse than the poor. This one in Ireland has affected the poor worse than the rich, although the distribution effects are not just relative to the rich and the poor but to different income groups and different classes of society. I do not dispute the fact that this has been very bad for the poor. Also, the poor do not have the ability to weather a loss of income, even if it was a proportional effect. Definitely, this has been very bad for the poor.