Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 14 May 2015
Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis
Nexus Phase
Mr. Terence O'Rourke:
I think the other issue is that a lot of that unenforceable security turned out to be solicitor's undertakings, which turned out to be, you know, not enforceable or when they went to go the solicitor to say, "Give us the perfected security", the solicitor was unable to do that. And I know the Law Society looked at this, and I know that whole system has been reformed. But, at the time, we are saying, as in terms of audit work, we could see that there were solicitor's undertakings there as good security, we relied on those solicitor's undertaking, as AIB's processes were, they had a process of getting ... top tier or second tier law firms to give those undertakings and it turns out that in retrospect that that ... those solicitor's undertakings didn't always come good. But I think it was reasonable for us at the time to say, "Solicitor's undertaking will get us there in terms of the security."
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