Professor Philip Lane:

Yes, there were various levels of that. Globally, there was insufficient weight put on the downside risks of financial innovation. The benefits were overstated and the costs understated. The Deputy mentioned fiscal policy, but there are more general issues such as the credit boom, the housing boom and so on. I would have said there is probably a fairly generic consensus that fiscal policy was too loose. Going back to the mid 1990s, people would have said that if a country was going into a monetary union, fiscal policy would need to be a lot more prudent.

I have a lot of sympathy for the political system. Once one goes into surplus, going from a small surplus to 5% or 6% will be very difficult to do. That is why having institutional reforms, such as a rainy day fund, might have helped. Insufficient attention was paid to the rise of stamp duty and capital gains tax.

On the wider issue of the credit boom, the house price boom and so on, individuals such as Professor Morgan Kelly, David McWilliams, Alan Ahearne and various people in the media who contributed-----