Professor Alan Barrett:

Let me take my first stab at explaining. I concede that the institute did not see the full extent of what was coming down the road but we published Professor Morgan Kelly's paper on housing. I know that it was Morgan Kelly's and UCD's work but the institute published the paper. Why? I remember that he submitted the paper to our quarterly economic commentary - we sometimes publish work by outsiders. We read his paper and thought it was an interesting and important piece of work. We did not agree with the findings but we published it because we thought it met the type of analytical standards that the institute appreciated. In that context, surely we deserve some credit for having done so. We came under an awful lot of pressure about publishing the paper but it was important, from the independence perspective of the ESRI, that it was published.