Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

So I became very concerned about the speculation in building land and the speculation ... the development of very speculative rezoning, because in the old Dublin County Council it was an area where tens of thousands of homes were going to be built for families and individuals and that was right and proper, but the level of zoning and, subsequently then, the level of lending by banks in competition with each other to lend money to developers for rezoned land became a major concern of mine, which I reflected in parliamentary questions and contributions in the Dáil. Secondly, then, as I've referenced in my statement, I became very concerned, as time went on, at the build-up of the bubble in relation to stamp duty where companies could rest contracts and not actually pay the stamp duty. The one that I drew attention to particularly was a particular development at the Irish Glass Bottle site and the tax break incentives which underpinned the development of the bubble.

There were ... in successive budgets in those years, both Minister McCreevy and Minister Cowen brought forward a whole series of tax breaks for private hospitals, for private nursing homes, for a whole series of different activities, sports injury clinics. There's a long list of them and that again certainly caused extreme apprehension to me that what was happening was a bit of a runaway train and I advocated that that should be brought to an end.