Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 23 April 2015
Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis
Nexus Phase
Mr. Donal Forde:
I certainly don't think so. It's for others to judge, but I don't think my style was ever intimidating. I made a practice of actually having a lot of personal conversations with people and I'd like to think I was approachable, so no, I don't think they were afraid at all. I'm, I'm pretty sure of that but others would have to validate that; I would feel confident in saying that. I think ... I don't want to say that people wouldn't challenge our position. I mean at our management team there would be discussions. The discussions would more relate to what segments of the property market we should be, in a sense, more positive about, others that we should be more negative about. There was a consciousness about the totality of that exposure, and each time it went back to the debate. As I've said, it wasn't one dimensional about are we in safe place, what's the risk, what's the stress test telling us, what are ... where are our competitors, what do we have to do to try and remain relevant to our customers; what do we have to do to meet the expectations of the market place. So, we had each time the debate about the balance of those and wrongly, each time we came down to feel that we were in the right place.
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