Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 13 May 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. Gerry Fitzpatrick:

I mean alarm bells ... it certainly raises that the scrutiny trying to understand what's going on in an organisation. If one thought the depositors or the structure of those lending money to the organisation were in jeopardy as a result of this, one might consider that, but I suppose the funding model and the capital plan was there and I understood where those sources of funding were coming from. I was absolutely at pains to make sure, and I think the directors to be fair were also doing lots in that they weren't reflecting this analysis in their financial statements. The setting of the capital plan that ... under ... that ...as to what a licensed bank, I don't ... you know that I suppose ... I don't license the organisation - the organisation that licenses it decides what level of capital in a growth environment like that could be, and decides what scalers to put on its capital. It can say "There's a minimum capital level, but because you're growing so fast you need different capital levels." And that's ... the regulator uses the financial information to make those decisions. So clearly the regulatory structure, and the licensing of banks means you should look at the financial information and decide whether that pace of growth is sustainable by capital and funding. But it was properly explained I thought in the financial statements.

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