Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

With respect, Mr. Neary, nobody is suggesting that you are saying the individual ... individual customers but let's be clear in this here: the transposition of the directive actually does exactly what you are arguing that you should not be able to do. It does put limits in relation to the type of loans that can be given by financial institutions in relation to their own resources to ... to large exposures. You had the power to increase those levels beyond what is ... what was in that directive. You didn't do that obviously, and you were completely aware that Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide were lending to a small number of cohorts at a huge amount of their loan book. The question I have to ask you again is: why did you do nothing, giving the risk to that institution of concentrating their loan book to a very small number of individuals, a power that was allowed to you by transposing the minimum requirements under the '95 EU directive?