Professor Niamh Hardiman:

We have evidence of a great deal of personal interaction between politicians and some of the key actors. We know that some of the political donations and so forth contributed to some of this personal closeness. That is not necessarily problematic in itself, but it is problematic where it might encourage too strong a commitment of public policy to policies that are very favourable to these sectors. There is a type of win all around. It is very favourable and attractive for politicians to be able to generate more economic activity at a time, as in the early 2000s, with the dotcom crash there were problems in attracting new inward investment. With elections coming there is always a bias in the electoral cycle towards generating growth, making sure people have more money in their pockets and having more people at work. This type of self-reinforcing bias towards policies-----