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

Mr. Kincaid is straying from my central question. Can he guarantee that banks will record the loans in a fair way, other than the way they were recording them previously to give their balance sheet a more respectable look? Are banks allowed, in certain circumstances, to record loans above their value? That is the central question.

The second part of that question is in looking at the big four firms, in the main, who audited the banks, how did they arrive at the conclusion that the banks were solid at that time when, just a few months afterwards, they were insolvent in all sorts of ways? Has the Central Bank analysed how that happened? Again, the question for the Central Bank is whether it is satisfied that if there are, in fact, new accounting rules, that situation will not happen again. Is there no change in the rules for how these firms account for themselves? That is the deeper question because if that has not changed, it is then back to Mr. Kincaid's comment about learning lessons. I am not trying to trap the representatives in any sort of scenario. I just cannot understand why, during the long banking inquiry, we never discovered anything about the reasons a clear set of accounts was signed off on and yet the banks all went bust within a short period after that.

Looking at the accounting rules at that time, what was allowed within those rules to give authority to those that were auditing to state that the banks' accounts were okay? The crash then happened and everything changed.

It happened so quickly and involved so much of taxpayers' money. Arising from that and the public commentary in fairly reputable newspapers, what does Mr. Makhlouf see as having changed in the accountancy practices and rules that will not allow this to happen again? The second part of my question concerns the value of these loans. Regarding the way in which those loans were valued at that time, which was obviously at a higher value, can Mr. Makhlouf tell us that this can never happen again?