Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Just to bring in Mr. Gallagher there, before I bring in Senator O'Keeffe, on some of the questions that was put to yourself, Mr. Torpey, a number of the difficulties, it would appear or you can correct if it didn't appear, such as the banks' loans-deposit ratios, the difficulties associating this stress testing and so forth, may have been associated or not with Ulster Bank's growth strategy. Given your own international experience, Mr. Gallagher, of banking, what is your view of Ulster Bank's growth strategy as compared with strategies that would have been seen or been involved with elsewhere during your international career? Ultimately Ulster Bank was going to compete with two big huge, with two big players in the Irish market, your ambition was to get on to a level kind of pegging position with them. And was it overly ambitious, in view of the size of the market and the dominance of the two banks ... was that a very ambitious and ultimately flawed approach or not by Ulster Bank to get into that space?