Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 22 April 2015
Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis
Nexus Phase
Mr. Frank Daly:
It's, it's probably then an absence of market analysis I think must come high up on the list, OK ... don't hold me to an exact one, two, three, four. But if I wanted to say what were the three top ones it would be the irresponsible developer funding, the absence of market analysis and then there would be zoning and planning policy because to a certain extent actually that and market analysis are they're, they are a bit of the same thing. The tax incentives is one, obviously I have an interest in that from my previous existence, but the reality is that the tax incentives that were there during that period, were probably ... I'm not saying that some of them weren't justified, initially they certainly were, but certainly some of them continued far too long as you know there's hardly any left in that. I chair the Commission on Taxation, as the Chairman mentioned in his opening remarks, and we just identified three instances where tax incentives might be appropriate, that is, to correct market failure, to attract mobile investment and to offset shortcomings in other policy areas. I think when some of those incentives were developed, they were definitely fitted into those criteria, the reality is over the years they didn't fit any of them and they were still continued ... so I think that was ... Then consumer mortgage lending ... again, I'm not sure there was any great irresponsible mortgage lending as such but again you were lending into a market where prices were grossly inflated and therefore the value of mortgages were grossly inflated.