Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 7 May 2015
Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis
Nexus Phase
Mr. Pat McArdle:
Okay, mine is the same. I think you've got the wrong end of the stick, Deputy. What it did was two things: it drove down interest rates, right, in Ireland, it led to Bank of Scotland Ireland coming into Ireland and undercutting all the other Irish banks and the other Irish banks went down. So interest rates ... and there was a low interest rate regime in Europe, so it was much cheaper to borrow. That's the first thing. But that's on the demand side. And, by the way, tracker mortgages came and were promoted by the authorities, right, which were super low interest rates. So you had big boost to demand on that side. And the other thing it did on ... on this side was it funded. Irish banks could now get virtually unlimited resources at low interest rates in the inter-bank market.
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