Professor Alan Ahearne:

The bubble was always going to burst. There was always going to be deep problems in the Irish economy as a result of the domestic bubble. The international factors contributed to the bubble, for example, the inappropriately low interest rates in the economic and monetary union. It intensified the downturn and made it worse because the external environment was so poor. There was a global recession, the worst downturn in the global economy since the Great Depression. All that deepened the downturn here.