Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

With apologies for cutting across Mr. Mas, the point I would like to get to is that banks - we are not aware which ones the witnesses provided with their services - may have lent to customers who subsequently lost their houses as a result of the companies coming in and saying they would insure a certain part of that mortgage. This allowed that bank to take more risk - Mr. Mas has described it as prudence - because it was not carrying all of the weight of the risk.

Everybody enters this type of scenario as a willing party but that person is without a house today because the bank loaned more money than the person had an ability to pay. The insurance allowed them to pass on some of the risk.