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

On 10 June 2001, Mr. McWilliams wrote on his website:

A property boom transfers huge wealth from wage earners to landowners with the banks sitting in the middle facilitating the trade. Wage earners become relatively poor ... Periods of speculative excess also lead, in every country, to extraordinary disparities of wealth. The “new rich” typically have their counterpart in a “new poor”. In Ireland, the property bubble has created an entire demographic section of highly indebted commuter-workers in tandem with a booming private client business for the banks and brokers.

Does Mr. McWilliams still hold to that analysis?