Professor John FitzGerald:

In my appendix, I go through how the problem and dangers to the economy from the housing bubble were identified going back to 1999 and in particular, the 2005 medium-term review. The editorial in the Irish Independentthe next morning talked about the ESRI being the Grinch that stole Christmas because we were promising a property market collapse just before Christmas. We could not have been more explicit about the dangers.