Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 6 May 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. Richie Boucher:

Just to confirm again, Deputy, I was a member of the GRPC so ... that wasn't a thing ... however in commentary in general terms, I note having read the document that in the end there was a recommendation of continuation, so you, you've quoted one component the entire document was produced by Mr. Murphy. He tried to give a balanced view and he tried to give a recommendation at the end that's his job and that's all of our jobs. But in hindsight, the level of mortgage lending we did was too much. So whether or not I was involved in the original decision making there were times when I could have said, "We need to slow down", and I didn't say that. But I did do and as has been shown in the documents that has been provided in the core documents, is in mortgage lending in the Republic of Ireland in one of the documents you provided shows the level of exception reduced and the volume of lending reduced in 2007 and 2008 when we did take the decision to stand back from certain market sectors but we didn't stand back enough and we didn't do it quickly enough.