Dr. Donal Donovan:

The soft landing was never for the commercial property market. Development property land, as I understand it, fell by 60%, 70% or 80%, which was way beyond a soft landing or what happened to household prices, which fell by approximately 50% or 60%.

It would be a little misleading to regard these two categories of lending as totally unconnected. The reason developers were building housing estates and related entities in all parts of Ireland and elsewhere is because they thought there would be people who would buy the houses they were building, live there and enjoy the leisure centres and shopping centres close to these houses. In a way, there was some connection.