Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 7 May 2015
Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis
Nexus Phase
Dr. Dan McLaughlin:
It was included ... from my recollection of the internal stress test in Bank of Ireland, yes it was. If memory serves, 40 odd per cent of the transfers to NAMA were foreign property. So it goes back to my point. You know, there was a massive property ... commercial property fall in America, in the UK. Also, in fairness, commercial property should also include land banks. I mean, the biggest losses where were banks were lending to developers or to people who were buying land, some of which was zoned and some of which wasn't. And, it was that price that fell ... in some cases, 90%. Now, just one very quick thing. I don't mean to suggest that all the losses were due to commercial property because, obviously, if you are AIB or Bank of Ireland or Ulster Bank, you're very intimately connected into the Irish economy. So the Irish economy contracts by 12.5% and unemployment goes from 4.5 to 15%, you're going to have a lot of losses on ... particularly on SME lending, which was inevitable as a consequence of the fall in GDP.
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