End self-regulation - A serious blow to public trust

A LOT of people will struggle to feel any genuine sense of sympathy for the banks embroiled in the three divisions of the High Court and the Commercial Court as they try to recover some of the €100 million used by two solicitors in a property scam.

Anyone faced with the imperative of paying a mortgage every month will be hard to convince that the banks are not the authors of their own misfortune. They will feel that they played a central role in driving house prices to the dizzy heights that forces them to service mortgages that not so long ago would have bought a large farm rather than a modest, suburban home. Such was the determination of nearly all lenders to secure an ever-greater share of the great bonanza of the past decade that they threw aside the caution that characterised the banking sector for so long.

Some institutions offered loans with the ease that a barstool expert offered advice.