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

On page 2 of his presentation, Mr. Vaughan says, "We had little or no reason to believe that key figures in our financial regulatory infrastructure were not [doing the work they were required to do and not] functioning as they should" What was manifest during the inflation of the bubble was rampant speculation in building land and the fact that the price of an ordinary home increased every year for ten years by the equivalent of the average industrial wage, from 1996 to 2006, and, as we know, the young people trying to buy houses had huge mortgages placed upon them, and the length of mortgage went from 20 years to 40 years. Did Mr. Vaughan ever consider launching a major project of investigative journalism to expose the level of profiteering that was going on behind that to investigate, for example, who was buying the land and then selling it a few years later for massive gains, how that affected the prices of the homes that were built on it and the detrimental social effect that would have on the people who were buying? Did the Irish Examinerever conduct such an investigative project of journalism?