Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 2 September 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. Michael Walsh:

Well, I think you have to, you know, kind of, go back to the very beginning. I mean, the initial permissions to actually get involved in property or property development were in 1992 in Ireland, you know, and that permission was obviously under Central Bank supervision. The second permission was in 1994 when the Central Bank gave permission to the society to acquire sites in London. So, to a degree, once that actually happened, there was a beginning of the development of expertise within the society in relation to that particular sector. Clearly, before, kind of, 1990, the society had done relatively small loans in the context of pubs or farms or whatever, but really, it was under the 1989 Building Societies Act that the society was effectively being encouraged - well, it was obviously before my time but, nonetheless, was being encouraged - to get into housing and housing development, and that was, you know, a facility and power that it actually embraced. By the time-----

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