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

Just one question gentlemen. You have been asked and other witnesses about the effect of a relationship of social partnership to the crisis of the banks. Now, social partnership would say that working people represented by their trade unions are supposed to be partners with big business, represented by their organisations and Government. But in relation to that evidence before this inquiry, indicated that one section of the partnership, including banks, developers and big builders speculated on ... hugely on land, profiteered exponentially in housing, for example, at the expense of a supposed second partner, which is ordinary working people and was allowed to do that by the third partner, Government and regulators which legislated and allowed this so-called light-touch regulation. Does the bubble in banking crisis show the social partnership was a fraud in fact?