Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

Mr. Torpey, how did the Ulster Bank Ireland ... we couldn't get precise figures yesterday from Mr. McCarthy because of the ... your relationship with Bank of Scotland, etc., but how did you finish up losing €13 billion or €14 billion if everything was so perfect, as you seem to suggest to me, in Ulster Bank with regard to lending? And just in relation to that, do you say or not that you ... the type of ... Mr. McCarthy told us yesterday, in essence, that Ulster Bank came in here as a much vaunted third force, which had been spoken about. Very ambitious targets of growth for profit, lending, etc. Would you agree or disagree that that would have put a lot of pressure on your lenders within the bank to grow the business much quicker than was perhaps prudent or not?