Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

There is much inequality, and it is not nice but rather ugly. That is why I put forward my name three and half years ago to become a public representative. I am not interested in the greasy bowl of politics. I am interested that today the banking inquiry is kicking off. It should already have been stated publicly that the committee will examine what happened with bank balance sheets. That is objective evidence from 2001 to 2008, measured every six months, as every licensed deposit-taking institution has evidence of what its board - forget the executives - has done. The boards direct the bank and they are the prudential fiduciary custodians of banks' financial engineering. If railway bridges started to fall in Ireland, everybody would look to engineers to see why it happened, taking in loads and distances between pillars. The same process should occur with balance sheets, as the evidence exists that banks were out of control. The domestic banking statistics rose from three times national income to five or nearly six times national income at 2008. Bank of Ireland had €61 billion of senior secured bonds on its balance sheet in 2008, so it was lending all its customer deposits.