Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 7 November 2012

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform

Statement of Strategy 2011-2014: Discussion with Department of Finance

2:45 pm

Mr. John A. Moran:

If the price being paid for the banks by the European Stability Mechanism was equivalent to the price we could secure, for example, by selling the banks to an external banking group or something like that, our advice would be that they should be sold to an external banking group which could then leverage off the banks in a better way to allow them service the economy in terms of technology and everything else. In terms of comparing options, we would start by asking how much more we would get if we were to sell them to the European Stability Mechanism as a sale of the equity we hold.