Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Senator Barrett is correct. The bank did have those standard financial statements before the bubble. What happened then? What minds were working? At the top were they cocaine fuelled rather than credit fuelled? It is a very serious responsibility with which we have been left.

Bank of Ireland had €61 billion of senior secured debt on its balance sheet in March 2008. That is nearly the amount of money the troika has lent to the country. One bank had senior secured debt resulting in this credit-fuelled bubble and asset prices that were going to collapse. That has now all whittled down.

Does Mr. Brown know who paid the bonds? It was the euro system. The Central Bank of Ireland and the European Central Bank gave the busted zombie banks, which remain zombie, the cash to pay the bondholders. Even the hedge fund managers could not believe it.

They thought the world had gone mad. They expected the bondholders to take a bath but they did not. The ECB stepped in first, followed by the Central Bank to create promissory notes with joint sign-off and signature of the Governor of the Central Bank. There were three waves of promissory notes totalling €31 billion. There was no deal earlier this year. It was given to us because Ireland would not have survived without the conversion of the promissory note into a series of 40-year bonds for an equivalent amount. The liability to the euro system remains. We should be going in with our shirts off and our sleeves rolled up to tell Mr. Draghi that it is all wrong and the €75 billion is actually €100 billion of losses in the six Irish banks. The losses for Ulster Bank amount to €15 billion or €16 billion and its loan book peaked at approximately €50 billion. My figures are right. Bank of Ireland is in cloud cuckoo land if it thinks provisioning of 8% on a loan book worth €95 billion is sufficient. That is nuts because only 26% of that overall loan book involves normal businesses producing goods and services. The remainder is property related, whether mortgages, buy-to-let, construction, development or investment properties.

Deputies Higgins, Boyd Barrett and Donnelly and Senator Barrett are right but the great gap is the lack of outside directors. I realise it is tough. I have worked in banking. This is why I understand what I am saying. I had to do the collections in ICC Bank. It is off the map now. Senator Barrett noted that we need the banks to help SMEs and understand business and industry. That is what ICC did. It was an equity bank but HBOS took it over and trashed it. It is now sinking and writing off between 45% and 50% of its entire loan book as it settles its debts.