Although the denouement revealed the source of the problem to be relatively obvious, it has been less easy to pinpoint the behavioural flaws (in the behaviour of lenders, regulators and borrowers) that prevented enough of them from foreseeing the risks and mitigating them.
Some of the differences are attributable to the prevailing international economic environment – always crucial for as open an economy as is that of Ireland. Some are due to the degree to which the pre-crisis economy had become distorted before the crash.