Mr. Jonathan Sugarman:

This is where I urge the Senator to refer to the 2010 article by Ms Kathleen Barrington in The Sunday Business Post, headlined "Norris raises red flag at IFSC". It refers to Senator Norris raising my issue in Seanad Éireann for the response of the then Minister for Finance, the late Brian Lenihan. Ms Barrington wrote that the allegations were of interest to German taxpayers, given that they were picking up the €100 billion tab for the collapse of Hypo Real Estate following its purchase of Depfa, a German bank which was headquartered in the IFSC in Dublin. Ms Barrington asserted that the Germans had pinned much of the blame for the bailout costs on the Irish regulator, citing its light touch regulation of Depfa. Irish banking sources, however, pointed out that Hypo's due diligence of Depfa should have picked up any problems. They also suggested that the Germans were trying to wash their hands of a problem partly of their own making.

At any rate the Irish taxpayer had a lucky escape when it came to Depfa as the cost of bailing it out would have come on top of the €73 billion we are paying to bail out our inadequately supervised banks, and it would probably have totally bankrupted the country.