Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 13 May 2015
Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis
Nexus Phase
Mr. Patrick Davitt:
Well, I feel that, and I think every valuer and auctioneer would feel, that it's very unfortunate what has happened and it's very unfortunate that the property went the way it did and like, you know, from people's point of view that are in negative equity and ... it's very, very unfortunate - certainly that part of the ... is very, very unfortunate and we certainly feel for that and we have lots of auctioneering members and valuers who went out of business and had to let employees go and their families themselves were involved with this. But, at the end of the day, the valuer has a responsibility. If you instruct the valuer to do a valuation for you on market value, that's what they have to do. They can't - just because they see that the property prices fell in 2006 or 2007 or 2009, or '82 or whatever - say "well I'm not ... I'm going to treat this valuation differently and I'm going to value it lowerly or higherly. And like they can't do that. They have to value the property on the basis of market value and there's a specific methodology there for it, so that's what you must do.