Professor Gregory Connor:

People talk about the too-big-to-fail problem from the bank’s perspective. Banks think they are too big to fail or that they have an implicit guarantee from their governments. One of the problems was that the money flowing in had an implicit guarantee from the European Union. The German, French and British savers and pension funds knew they could freely lend to the Irish banking sector and that they were safe because of the euro. There was an implicit belief that was part of the confidence.

The only bodies that had the power to stop it were the Irish Central Bank and the Financial Regulator. They should have said, "Stop". That is the normal function of a central bank. One pulls away the bowl just as the party gets started. That is what they were supposed to do. They did not do that, however.