The startling revelation that the special tax treatment of property developers cost ordinary taxpayers €800m at the height of the boom, is another strong indictment of Fianna Fail’s mishandling of the economy.

This scam was a tax-avoidance mechanism concocted by Fianna Fail, supposedly to encourage developers to release more development land. In fact, it resulted in a €800m bounty to developers, relating to 10,000 land transactions, at considerable expense to the public purse.

This tax ruse was just one of a whole slew of such arrangements that led to a situation where many millionaires paid little or no tax at all, at the height of the Celtic Tiger boom. These property-based breaks, meant that life became one big tax-break bonanza for property speculators under Fianna Fail.

Any enquiry into the economic crash and banking collapse must address the issue of how successive Fianna Fail Ministers, particularly current Taoiseach Brian Cowen, his predecessor in Finance Charlie McCreevy, and former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, stoked the property bubble with devices such as this.