Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 13 May 2015
Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis
Nexus Phase
Mr. Gerry Fitzpatrick:
Absolutely. I think I had a duty of care of a professional standard. I believe it was a difficult environment to work in because judgments were quite difficult. I can see that the ... in hindsight the shortcomings in a historical measurement of financial information could be misinterpreted. But in no way did I feel that I was either unable to give a report, because in that case I would have to qualify. But I looked for the appropriate data at the time and I thought the board ... because ultimately it was their accounts, were searching and looking to make sure that they had measurement, and that included trying to understand what the state of impairment was in their loan book, and having reasonably processes, not always perfect processes, to do that. And then, secondly, having identified those cases that were impaired, the question was what collateral value would you recover. And that was a challenge but seeking out information, as I say, from a bottom-up, looking at individual cases, and then a top-down, at portfolio level saying "What is the level of risk?", they measured that in appropriate ... in accordance with the appropriate standard. It didn't ultimately transpire to be that way because the assumptions proved to be flawed, because ultimately the market and future events caused collateral values to fall further and further and further. But ultimately that, as I say, it is not a future-loss model.
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