A decade ago, the Central Bank of Ireland introduced new mortgage market rules designed to prevent another bubble-and-crash episode in the Irish housing market.  It might seem obvious, in retrospect, that Ireland needed such rules after the crash. Indeed, Ireland would have benefited (hugely) from them had they been in place from the 1990s, thus preventing the decline in lending standards that defined the Irish housing market between 2001 and 2007 (or, indeed, between 2001 and 2012).  But while that was, of course, relevant, the immediate trigger for the Central Bank’s new rules was the prospect of another bubble so…