Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 17 December 2014

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Context Phase

2:20 am

Mr. Peter Nyberg:

I try to understand the question – I really do – but I might not answer correctly. The banks and the bank managers did not seem to consider themselves speculators. They lent money to real estate developers and to people who bought real estate. As the value of the real estate went up, for reasons they considered external, they thought everything was going well. Larger issues of social consequence and so forth did not arise in that context.