Speaking in the Dáil today Sinn Féin Spokesperson on Finance Pearse Doherty has said if there was a herd mentality in this State over the last decade then Sinn Féin was the black sheep. We did not support the consensus. Nor did we follow blindly when the property bubble was being inflated.
Deputy Doherty said: “In the years leading up to the crisis, too often, in the clamour for ever higher profits, the voice of reason was not heard and risks were ignored.
“If there was a herd mentality in this State over the last decade then Sinn Féin was the black sheep. We did not support the consensus. Nor did we follow blindly when the property bubble was being inflated.
“What is worrying is that there is a clear and present danger that after this report the Government will declare that the problems and features leading to this crisis were confined to banking, banking supervision and financial regulation in this period. There is a danger that we will be told that they have now been addressed and that every other area in the Irish public sphere presents absolutely no evidence of these failings.
“But it is not sufficient to look back and criticize what went wrong when the mechanisms and the policies of the crisis are still in place and still being implemented.
“We cannot just criticize the last Government when the new one is administering the same policies as the previous one, those of the EU and the IMF.
“In our view, this House will be looking at another report in a few years’ time – one that will chronicle Ireland’s demise into disorderly default. We will pay yet another outside expert to use the gift of hindsight to tell us once more that a herd mentality threw us into economic, financial and social catastrophe.”
