Michael D’Arcy: Don’t forget to remember

D’Arcy, the new junior finance minister, is determined to learn lessons from the mistakes of Ireland’s ‘lost decade’

INTERVIEW Michael D’Arcy ‘The dynamic of the coming decade is going to be different’ Picture: Bryan Meade

Michael D’Arcy, the new junior finance minister, probably doesn’t need a crash course in what happens when the financial system gets derailed. In 2014 and 2015, the Wexford TD (who was then a senator) spent hundreds of hours on the banking inquiry, hearing testimony from the dramatis personae of the crash: Brian Cowen, Jean-Claude Trichet, Bertie Ahern, developers, bankers and regulators.

Back then, Ireland was emerging from what D’Arcy calls a “lost decade”, ...