John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Durkan. Mr. Kincaid made reference to institutions needing to learn lessons when talking about the past. Does he think lessons have been learned around the issues that were raised regarding accountancy firms that sign off on the banks' accounts? I recall that on 21 October 2020, I raised the issue of an article in the Financial Times. It spoke about banks deliberately overvaluing their loans. I then noticed an article by Mr. Matthew Vincent in which he spoke about the fact that banks were audited before the crash and given a clean bill of health. In one case, the comment was that both the cash flow and balance sheet were insolvent.

Moving on from there to 2018, I read another article on the same issue and the fact the Central Bank was not meant to lend to insolvent institutions so why did it? Again it cites a bank having its accounts examined and signed off and some months later the same accountants and others outside did not come to that same view. As part of hiding their actual position, and the same can be said of the main banks and Anglo Irish Bank at that time, the use of the value of properties was raised. It then relates back to accounting rules in terms of their analysis of a bank's position. In October 2022 a report in Private Eyesaid that internationally agreed accounting rules heavily that were influenced by the big four accountancy firms, which draw so much of their incomes from the financial sector, have barely changed.

I will come back to Mr. Kincaid's point about lessons that were learned. Accounting rules that applied at that time and allowed for that analysis to happen, although within months billions of euro had to be pumped in by the State, have not changed. Banks currently have to estimate what their losses on loans, such as mortgages, will be over the following 12 moths rather than what the total they will not get back really is. This was from a Private Eyereport. If nothing has changed since the crash, if properties and loans will face difficulty, which the Central Bank believes, and if there are the same rules for accountancy firms to perform their analyses of the banks' positions, will we have the same outcome? We now have bankers' bonuses coming in and the scene that was set in 2008 is nearly set again, with the same accounting rules.

How can we get a different outcome if what is in place is still the same? Has the Central Bank looked at that? When its representatives previously appeared before the committee, I asked the same question arising out of the Financial Timesarticle. It was hoped that we would get an analysis based on that article and question. What do the witnesses say regarding all of that? Can we now be comfortable with the lessons learned from the past? Have these rules been changed? Has the valuation of properties within the bank, including loans and so on, been changed to reflect reality rather than some other position?