Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 22 April 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. Frank Daly:

I think you had it in the banks. You also had it, by the way, in the people who were actually borrowing. It is interesting you should mention pub talk. When you look at the lower tranche of people who borrowed, the 627 in the €16 billion category, a lot of those were in property syndicates. A lot of that was based, I think, on what has been described in the past as sort of golf club talk - that property is the place to be, if you're not in property you're not really in the game at all. So I think right across the spectrum there was a lack of rigour in wondering what we were getting into and I think you would have to ask the banks the extent to which they actually subscribe to that view or not.