Bertie Ahern Has Blamed Ordinary “Joe And Mary Soap” For The Recession

Bertie Ahern has managed to p*ss an awful lot of people off this week. The former taoiseach has shed some light on what he thinks caused the country's financial meltdown, and people are not happy. Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme, Bertie revealed he feels the recession is thanks to the "Joe and Mary Soaps" for getting too "cocky". He 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 he went on to explain that it wasn't COMPLETELY Joe Soap's fault - it's also due to the fact that these cheap loans were available. He went on: “That problem came from the availability, which we had never had since the foundation of the state, of cheap money through the European system.” The former Government leader stepped down from his role months before the recession took hold and two years before the infamous IMF bailout.