Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 2 September 2015
Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis
Nexus Phase
Mr. Michael Walsh:
Okay. But, you know, the Financial Regulator was doing absolutely the right thing by saying, "Look, we have to look at contingency.", and I think you'll be aware from the fact that, you know, I mean, months earlier, they had started to look at private sector contingency solutions in the event of something actually going wrong somewhere in the system. So the Financial Regulator was absolutely right. They did exactly what they should have. Now, I think, the reality is - I think you will have heard it from Mr. Burrows - all of the institutions, by September 2008, were suffering from, shall we say, liquidity pressures. The society was unique in the sense it had, for all practical purposes, more liquidity than anybody else. I mean, I think Mr. McDonagh mentioned that the NTMA had something like €5 billion in cash at that point in time. You know, in comparison, the society, even after the problems during September, had €3 billion cash on hand.
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