Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 18 June 2015
Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis
Nexus Phase
Mr. John Moran:
Well, it depends. I mean, the ... a question I got asked when I was at my last PAC, I think ... the thing ... because we were coming up to the banks' stress test, was whether I thought we would need more capital for the banks and was that going to cause this major problem. And ... it was in advance, right, so I had no idea what the answer was, but my answer, if I recall correctly, was that we might have needed more capital in one or other of the banks, but if we did, it wouldn't be of a magnitude that would cause a problem to the State, right?. So I answered it that way. I mean, the information that's there now with respect to sort of our banking sector would suggest, and, indeed, previous sale ... or recent sales of PTSB would say it's been validated now by others, other than just the regulator, that we don't at least have to worry about a hit to our fiscal coming from the bank situation, right?. We have, as I pointed out in this statement here, the reality of the situation even still in 2015, is that we are spending more money than we are paying into the system, you know, so the taxpayers of Ireland and ... and the rest, and our other revenues are still lower than the amount of money we're spending, even no matter how bad we may think elements of the public sector are and how much investment is needed, we are still putting debt onto future generations for us to live in 2015 and 2016 right?
So, we have to be very careful in that scenario that we don't do anything that causes difficulties, we are-----
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