Professor Terrence McDonough:

It is certainly true that we did deal with the crisis we had. As primarily an economic historian, my work has been involved with observing that the resolution to one crisis is often, as history unfolds, the basis for the outbreak of the next. That is very much what happened in Ireland. We resolved the 1980s crisis in a certain way and the way in which we resolved it formed the basis for continuing social change and continuing social struggle. The upshot of those very institutions which resolved the crisis was ultimately, many years later, to set the stage for the crisis we face today. That is one of the contradictions of history.