Professor Terrence McDonough:

I believe the ingredients of the perfect storm are not simply limited to financial questions. This is one of the larger points I want to make in the context of this hearing today. While there is much emphasis placed on the financial troubles that faced Ireland, Europe and the larger global capitalist system, this should not blind us to the fact that there were other deeply rooted institutional factors. These factors contributed to the inauguration of the crisis in 2008, but also seriously contributed to the failure to address that crisis in subsequent years. These factors particularly relate to stagnant wages; the falling power of labour to defend its working conditions; low levels of investment closely related to high levels of excess capacity associated with globalisation on international markets; the inability of governments at local Irish level, at larger European level and at the global level to find a way to intervene to compensate for the financial chaos we faced; very low levels of private investment and the increasing inability of the ordinary person to prop up consumption in the economy because of falling wages and falling standards of living.

The crisis is broad but at the same time much deeper. It goes to the basic institutions of the era in which my students have grown up, which began in 1987 in the international context and in subsequent years in the Irish context.