Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 18 June 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. Kevin Cardiff:

Well, there didn't need to be a lot that day, so in a sense, in that sense, yes, sufficient. The funding cliff was in our minds from early on. Two issues arose later, I don't know if I may go into them, about the funding cliff. One was that we change the nature of the guarantee so as to address ... to allow the funding cliff to be addressed, so within limits, within fairly tight limits, not on everything, we allowed longer term debt to be issued from, well, as soon as we had the legislation so ... and the Commission approval, so probably from 2009 onwards, which was addressing the funding cliff. The other thing was that we started the process with the European Commission of getting renewals in place for the end of the guarantee. We started that process months and months ahead and, for whatever reason, it was a long, drawn out discussion. I suppose they didn't like the guarantee, and others that would be advising them didn't, so it was only finally ... the extension was only really, finally, formally agreed a week or two before the end of the period and that made dealing with the funding cliff more difficult; it made it harder to handle. So, answer is it wasn't dealt with on the night, but certainly there were strategies in place and work going on early enough to address it but, as it turned out, the situation had moved on so much that even if they could issue securities at that stage no one wanted-----

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