Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 17 June 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. Tom Considine:

No, it wasn't. It was .... in the period up to 2001, the economy was very strong and the pressures and that, you know, coming from that, I think, drove up wages. I mean, there's a kind of a belief that, say, for example, if you want to build roads and you have the money to build them, that that's your problem solved. Well, it isn't, because you need engineers and you need planners and you need ... and sometimes, I ... that paper that I submitted, again going back to it, mentions that, that in the early years, the skills weren't in the system and you ended up pushing up wages and costs. So it's not that anybody is acting irresponsibly; it's ... we were coming from a situation where-----