Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 29 July 2015
Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis
Nexus Phase
Ms Ethna Tinney:
Yes, I'll explain. We owned Westmoreland Street, okay? We had owned it for years and years and years and not only was it our headquarters, but it was our most important branch because of the footfall, the number of people who would use it and all that kind of thing. It was a real asset for EBS. Now the rationale for selling it, which didn't happen by the way, for years. It lay empty for years. That was one of the things that we hadn't thought through as a board was that we were now doing the very opposite of what EBS had been set up in the first place to do. We were selling our home to move into rented accommodation. The rented accommodation was a very, very fancy building in Burlington Road, which never had a branch, okay? Although it was mooted to open a branch in the early stages. Again, one of the seductive processes of getting the board to agree to this 25-year lease, by the way 25-year lease on this building, state-of-the-art building. We were involved with the builder. I am not going to say who it is because I-----
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