Bertie Ahern Points Finger At 'Joe And Mary Soap' For Their Role In The Crisis

Taking everything into account one would be forgiven for having a small, teeny tiny bit of admiration for Bertie Ahern for his unshakable penchant for being as bold as brass.

In his latest foot in mouth adventure, he took part in an interview with BBC Radio 4, where poor auld Joe Soap and Mary Soap fell in for some criticism for their contribution to the Irish financial crisis.

Speaking about the future of the EU and how the Eurozone fueled the Irish economic collapse, Ahern said:

Everybody started living on credit and credit was whatever you wanted yourself. Anyone could walk into any institution and seem to get any amount of money and this is where the cocky bit came in. Unfortunately, collectively as a country, we started leveraging one off the next.

So Joe Soap and Mary Soap, who never had a lot, got the loans for the second house and leveraged the third house off the second house and the fourth on the third, and you know, what are you having yourself. So that was a huge problem.

But where did that problem come from? That problem came from the availability, which we had never had since the foundation of the state, of cheap money through the European system.

Poor aul Joe Soap gets the blame for everything. Just once I'd like to get his side of the story.