Professor Terrence McDonough:

That is an interesting question. I would certainly have prevented it from all flowing into the housing market and at the cost of having it flow elsewhere. Certainly, high levels of capital inflow that would have been invested in increasing productive capacity in the Irish economy would have been more than welcome. High levels of capital inflow, that perhaps flowed back out again and could be to some extent taxed along the way, would have been, maybe, not to the benefit of our trading partners but could have been to the benefit of the Irish Exchequer. High levels of capital inflow which then flowed into simply increasing the price of assets, most prominently, commercial and residential property, were not constructive.

I think we confused rising asset prices with rising health in the economy.