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

On page 2 of Ms Hunt's written submission, she states:

The research function at CBRE Ireland that I head up is modelled on the research platform in CBRE offices worldwide ... Having access to accurate and timely market information on trends and transactions is vital to CBRE in being able to accurately assess the commercial real estate market and provide the best qualitative and quantitative information to our clients.

On 31 July 2006 Ms Hunt was quoted on the businessworld.iewebsite as saying:

The second hand housing market is showing signs of price stabilisation but some new home buyers are getting nervous because of interest rate movements. This is more indicative of a steady transition to more stable conditions than a sign of a crash or bubble bursting.

On 17 April 2007 CBRE released a press statement that was highly critical of RTE's programme "Future Shock", calling it "irresponsible journalism" and stating we should not be entertaining "negative speculation and unfounded, worst-case doom and gloom scenarios when all that is being experienced is a levelling in the extraordinary pace of growth we previously experienced". It went on to state the programme "should be dismissed as fiction and a soft landing for the housing market is still possible and is the most likely scenario". Ms Hunt stated at the time:

It is simply technically incorrect to assume that Irish house prices will decline significantly simply on the basis that this has occurred in other economies where the fundamentals were so different. It is also irresponsible to suggest that the "negative equity" scenario that occurred in the late 1980s in the UK could occur in Ireland...

Did CBRE get it so wrong because the international research platform it had used was flawed? If there were other reasons, what were they?