David Cullinane (Sinn Fein)

The first is what caused the crash in Ireland and what caused the problem in the first place. Our public finances collapsed in 2008 because the property and consumption bubble burst. That is what caused the crash. We built our public finances on sand, an unsustainable foundation, and it all collapsed.

Let us remind ourselves why it collapsed. It was because banks, primarily the former Anglo Irish Bank, not a high street bank but a property and developers' bank, borrowed cheap money from French, German, Dutch and British banks and from the bond markets and gave it to a small group of developers and speculators who speculated on the price of land. What happened is they ended up with huge loans that they could not pay back, massive debts and, of course, the taxpayer had to come in to bail them out.