Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Thank you very much. I'm going to start moving to wrap things up Mr. Quinlan and I'll be inviting Deputy Higgins and Senator O'Keeffe back in a moment. But if I can just deal with a couple of matters there first. One is the ... and I want to ... concentrating on the business model in general terms. The Central Bank in the assessment of the valuation processes that were carried out, commented that ''Credit institutions were often negligent and imprudent in the manner in which they requested property valuations." And they then went on to say "There was often a lack of specificity attaching to requests for valuations or inadequate or inappropriate assumptions provided." In your own experience and having been a very, very significant person in the construction-development industry in this country, could you maybe comment or give us your insight and I'm not looking for the specific institutions, I'm looking at the operation of the business model? Did you ever encounter that the valuation processes had weaknesses as identified there by the Central Bank or, if so, how widespread or otherwise was that practice in your experience?