Professor Niamh Hardiman:

It would be hard to say. Ireland is not the only country which experienced a crisis, of course. The prevalence of belief in self-regulating markets was what did for us all. The economics profession is engaging in a lot of heart searching about the way it formulated its ideas, taught students about risk, and downplayed all the issues which were very much on the political agenda in the wake of the great depression when regulation and the separation of interests between high street banks and other financial institutions were introduced. There is great literature now on the lack of vigilance, how risky markets are and how dangerous it is to rely on markets in a world where we have new, hard to understand, complex and risky financial products, capital mobility and enormous financial corporations.