Professor Gregory Connor:

In terms of causality, there was this enormous debt inflow which spread into the banks, with the latter forcing themselves to take more and more as part of the inter-bank rivalry that was going on. Shareholders were part of the problem. We had pensioners with their Bank of Ireland and AIB shares, many of whom never voted. Are they to blame? They paid the cost; in fact, all shareholders equally paid the cost for encouraging the banks down that route.