Ireland’s over exuberance with housing credit was signalled in this publication and elsewhere as long ago as the mid 1990s – yet the boom continued, with the worst excesses (and what will be the source of the real long term problems) occurring only in the past four years to end 2006. Back in February 2000, William Slattery, a former deputy head of Banking Supervision in the Central Bank of Ireland published an article which was headlined: ‘Property price fall of 30-50 p.c. possible if credit growth not curbed’. The article caused a considerable stir at the time, and Slattery (subsequently head of Financial Services Ireland, and today chief executive of State Street, which employs some 2,000 people in financial services in the IFSC) spoke about it in various radio and television interviews.
We re-publish that article again in this month’s issue (page 8). It speaks for itself. |
