Mr. David McWilliams:

That is a huge question. In a small country one gets significant vested interested. When a small country experiences a banking and property boom many people will make a lot of what looks like very easy money. That cohort of people have a clear incentive to vilify the maverick.

With respect to my own profession of economics, it amazed me at the time that so few, in any positions of power, did anything or said anything. I have found it amazing that people were swanning around with titles like bank expert and international bank expert. I said "Well, hold on a second. You were living in the country that had the most catastrophic bank crisis and you didn't open your beak." People watching this are entitled to ask that question.

There is a thing in Ireland which I refer to as conventional wisdom. When conventional wisdom sets in it is repeated by serious people. People say "He is not a serious person but I am a serious person because the guy beside me is a serious person." Then he repeats the mantra and then mantras replace hard thinking. Once mantras replace hard thinking then every serious person buys into them. J.K. Galbraith said something very interesting about changing one's mind. It is very hard to change one's mind if one is a serious person. He said that when faced with the choice of changing one's mind or finding the proof that indicates one does not have to, the vast majority gets busy finding the proof. Let us consider that thought in the context of this country. People like me were regarded with the view that it could not possibly be right, what this guy is saying, because the vista is too apocalyptic. One of the views was "Ah but he spent too much time abroad."

I feel, and this is worrying for subsequent future years, that when this society coalesces around what I would call a simple truth, such as there will be a soft landing or the banks are well capitalised, it is an extraordinarily dangerous place to be. It means that, like lemmings, we all go over the cliff together.

As I have always thought, if one thinks of a quadrant of maverick, consensus, right and wrong, which applies to politics as well, if one is in that consensus and one is wrong then people adopt the view that we are all wrong together and sure that is grand. People think "We are all a bit stupid but we are all stupid together". If one is in the consensus and one is right people think "Sure, we are all geniuses, that is great. Jesus, you are smarter than me. Oh my God, you are outrageously smart." If one is a maverick and one is wrong then one is a maverick that is wrong. In that case one is incredibly isolated, laughed at, sneered at and regarded as being somebody who is not serious.