Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

The financial markets as Professor McDonough describes them involve international financial institutions, huge banks and hedge funds. Do financial markets operate as a socially progressive factor, a factor that enhances democracy, a kind of economic dictatorship or one, more or none of the above? He described market fundamentalism as a belief that important social decisions about production and income distribution are almost always and everywhere left to be determined in the markets. Was the bailout of banks and bondholders as seen in Ireland consistent with neoliberalism and, if not, why not?