Professor Alan Ahearne:

At its most intense, the crisis here was an interaction between both crises. If the bubble had burst here but the global economy was still flying, we would still have had trouble here but not as much, and the recovery would have been much faster. The first sign of trouble in 2006 was some failed auctions in Dublin's high-end market. The market had been flying as the overall market rose but some failures in 2006 represented the start of trouble for developers and sellers.