Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 23 April 2015
Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis
Nexus Phase
Mr. Dermot Gleeson:
Yes, yes. Well, I remember the day ... I told you earlier that we would get independent economists and alleged experts - and I don't mean that in respect of Professor Ahearne; he is undoubtedly an expert. I have very great regard for him. But some of the other experts we had on other occasions weren't all that expert in the end. On that day, we had two economists come and talk to us. One was Professor Alan Ahearne, and he expressed the view that residential property in Ireland could be as much as 30% overvalued. On the same day we had another economist - I don't think it's any harm to name Professor John FitzGerald - and he thought that the overvalue could be 15%, and that's in the slides, and I have them here if you need to see them. Take the middle of those and it's 22%. We stress tested for 30%, and we could have borne 30% if all the rest of the things hadn't happened, but we could have borne ... our extreme stress test about the same time stressed for a drop in residential of 30%, but, of course, lots of other things went very wrong as well.
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