Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

When one reads the report, as I am sure Deputy Mooney has, one sees that it finds there was a nexus between a banking crisis and a fiscal crisis. While we can blame international factors for a banking crisis, neither Lehman's nor the ECB caused the fiscal crisis. Some in the Senator's own party have been good enough to apologise for the role it played. While Senator Craughwell points out that the banks do not seem to have been humbled, clearly not every member of Fianna Fáil appears to have been humbled. Senator White said she did not know where this talk about the soft landing came from. She could not believe it at the time. At the time of the general election, Fianna Fáil members were going around telling Opposition parties and the public that there was to be a soft landing, everything would be grand, we could trust Bertie and Brian with the gig, we should not worry and they would sort it all out.