Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

Mr. Drury, you were a director from 2002 to 2008 and I'd just like to take you through, very briefly, the rate of growth in Anglo lending, corresponding largely with that time, and Nyberg and other reports refer to this. But, in 2002, from annual reports, Anglo had €13.3 billion in loans. In 2003, that went up by €4 billion. It went up by €7 billion in 2004; by €10 billion in 2005; by €16 billion in 2006; and by €17 billion in 2007. So, €54 billion in extra loans between ... in five years. And Patrick Honohan, now Governor of the Central Bank, in The Economic and Social Review, summer 2009, said:

A very simple warning sign used by most regulators to identify a bank exposed to increased risk is rapid balance sheet growth. An annual real growth rate of 20% is often taken as the trigger. Each of the locally-controlled banks had at least one year in which this threshold was triggered. One of them, Anglo Irish [Bank], crossed it eight of nine years and indeed its average annual rate of growth, 1998-2007, was 36%.

And we had another witness to the inquiry here, Mr. Bill Black, a former US regulator ... are you familiar with him? Yes. Mr. Black said, "The rule of thumb on banking for many decades if you grow more than 25% a year, you will likely fail." Were you aware of the risks of this kind of exponential growth in the loans of Anglo Irish Bank?