Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 13 May 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. Patrick Davitt:

Well, I personally would believe in them. But, like, until such time as you would look at each report you would ... you obviously ... it's only then you would ... you would see whether the valuation was correct or not correct. But the ... the next scenario after that is that every valuer has to have professional indemnity insurance when they write a valuation. So its ... apart from the standards that the institute would actually make for them, they have ... they have professional indemnity insurance to cover in the event ... if they make a mistake. So if the valuations are incorrect ... like, the banks obviously can sue the valuer. And we haven't seen any evidence of that. So, like, the robustness of them from looking at them ... looking in at them without actually seeing the actual valuation itself would lead me to believe that they were robust ... on the date that they were done. Like ... it ... what happened with NAMA and the prices went down, you could also say if those valuations were done in 2002 and then you were comparing them to 2006 you would also see that the valuations could have gone a way up.