Mr. Frank McDonald:

Developers were out to make money. There is nothing wrong with that and we should not be surprised about it. That is what they do. There is no point in building something for sale unless one can get a good price for it and make a profit in the process. That is the basis of the system we have and the developers operated it.

Again, they had an unlimited supply of credit available to them. If they wanted to buy a site for €10 million or whatever, it was no problem to them to get the money from the bank. Every acquisition was funded separately, sometimes even by a consortium of banks. The determination would be there then to secure the maximum amount of development on that particular site, so that one ended up with these vast schemes such as the Beacon South Quarter and other places like it. It was like little pieces of Los Angeles were appearing in south Dublin. One was left wondering what on earth was going on.