Follow the MoneyBy David McWilliams Gill and Macmillan 298 pp; €16.99

OF ALL the doomsayers who claim to have seen the crash coming, David McWilliams is one we can say definitely did.

Who can forget his dramatic interventions on RTÉ, like a ginger-haired John the Baptist, finger paused in mid-air predicting the calamity of a credit bubble and an over reliance on property. The merit of McWilliams is that he also brought a zest to his analysis in the form of a social narrative and the ongoing fate of emblematic characters such the Kell’s Angels, Miss Pencil Skirt and the infamous and mercurial Breakfast Roll Man.

In his new book, the author revisits these characters to see how they’re getting on: not well, obviously, and struggling with the downturn and negative equity.

We are also introduced to new characters such as the Godfather and Merchant of Ennis, as he lays into those he holds responsible for the current mess. However, it is possible that McWilliams is enjoying himself too much and he has gone for some outlandish parallels, likening the lending culture to drugs, and constantly referring to the banking system as the Mafia.

We have also had the book’s revelations about Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan visiting the author’s house for a midnight chat about the banking system, and about Seánie FitzPatrick allegedly growling at him that no “f***ing Protestant would be taking over Anglo Irish Bank”.

These spicy revelations tend to overshadow the book’s considerable insight and McWilliams’s ability to connect macroeconomics to real people. He has a witty style and such is his colour and dialogue that he could do worse than try his hand at a novel. You wish he’d stay with the trendy, but now indebted, young couple at the Electric Picnic, for example.

Unlike other critics, McWilliams at least acknowledges that the boom was real. “People got richer. In, fact, according to the EU, Ireland even [got] more equal during the boom. All the cars, the houses, the new companies, the workers, the hospitals, the roads and trains, and the Luas, they were all real. There was nothing fake about the traffic, the commute, the profits, the bonus structures, the restaurants.” However, he then asks “why were we so slow to twig that the whole thing was a bubble”?

But was it really a bubble? The transformation of Ireland endures, built on native enterprise culture as well as inward investment. It wasn’t all built on property. McWilliams also tends to underestimate the international situation and does not stress enough the devastating impact on Ireland, as on other countries, of the international banking crisis.

He also seems to join other pundits in exempting the general public from blame for the situation. The banks didn’t force people to take out loans, after all, and the Government didn’t force people to embrace a system that lowered taxes and pursued a UK/US economic model.

You cannot blame the barman for giving you a hangover.

But we have a poor sense of collective responsibility. It’s always someone else’s fault, usually the politicians. This means, for example, that the public sector unions can say, “it has nothing to do with us”. McWilliams knows this and should say it louder, otherwise we will never come to grips with the problems we have created for ourselves.

Eamon Delaney's Breaking the Mould: A Story of Art and Irelandwill be published this month by New Island