Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

On the issue of loan-to-value and debt-to-income ratios, now that this hopefully is being done much more sensibly than in the past, one could state in retrospect that by such rules, a loan was reckless. One could state there is no point in pursuing a case to get €340,000 out of a person who has an income of €34,000 and that this was reckless as defined by the rules now in place. While speed limits may not always have been there, in retrospect people who were driving around at twice the current speed limits were engaging in reckless behaviour even before we had such limits. Consequently, one could use current sensible prudential rules and state that one judges AIB to have been daft in very many cases and while this will have to come in addition to the €64 billion, we should get things moving on the other front. As for the licensing issue, I would be worried by some of the people who appeared before the joint committee. As for requirements that people would actually know some economics to run a bank, it did not happen very much in the past.