Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 10 June 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. Tom O'Connell:

Well, as I said earlier ... well, I ... there was a political element to it as well. I mean, the bank was very political, let's be honest about it, I mean, to the extent that they were concerned about residential mortgages because they are very important for you guys politically, even though residential mortgages don't generally bring down banks. It's commercial property that brings down banks. So the focus ... I mean, what the origins of the focus on the residential mortgage market was I can't quite recollect but, I mean, it would be pretty obvious the indicators for house prices are out there, you know, or were out there. Commercial property prices there's ... I don't think there's an official CSO statistic or series for that. And if you look back at the stability reports you'll see, for example, CBRE indicators or Lisney's or whatever were used. So they were private ones, you couldn't ... I'm sure they were well complied but, there weren't official data there which by ... so there was the political importance of the housing sector and the fact that the official statistics related more to the private housing sector than commercial ... that probably explained why the focus tended to be on the housing sector, even though, I mean, history is replete with cases where-----

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