Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 29 April 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. David Duffy:

Well, I believe that the answer is "Yes," that the global liquidity crisis helped accentuate that reality and helped quantify it in many cases, in many countries, and I think Ireland ... when I was in previous banks there was a view across some of those banks that the asset class of real estate, particularly even private homes ... there were many others, but private homes were reaching unsustainable levels across a number of European countries, and that was observed a couple of years before the crisis hit. It was very different than sub-prime, which was part of the global liquidity crisis in the US, but when you have an income, and if your income is rising 5% or 10% a year and the cost of a home is rising 30%-40% a year there's an elasticity problem. At some point that breaks. And so I think there are ... definitely the liquidity crisis put people at risk where there was over-concentration.

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