There is prima facieevidence of a comprehensive failure of bank management and direction to maintain safe and sound banking practices, instead incurring huge external liabilities in order to support a credit-fuelled property market and construction frenzy. – Central Bank governor Patrick Honohan placing primary blame on the banks themselves for the collapse of the banking system
Macroeconomic and budgetary policies contributed significantly to the economic overheating, relying to a clearly unsustainable extent on the construction sector and other transient sources for Government revenue (and encouraging the property boom via various incentives geared at the construction sector). This helped create a climate of public opinion which was led to believe that the party could last forever. – Rejecting the Government view that the crisis was caused in the main by external factors
Hindsight is always clear and obviously we would not have taken such a course if we had known of the scale of the property collapse which was facing the country . . . I deeply regret that. – Former finance minister (from 2004 to 2008), Taoiseach Brian Cowen, responds