Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 27 May 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. Tony Grimes:

No, it was contingency planning at that stage, but I think it had moved beyond it to some extent. I mean, we already had the Northern Rock episode in September 2007. We had the liquidity issues at the end of 2007 also, over the end of the year, so we'd moved beyond the stage of thinking it could never happen. It was into, I think, a realisation that we'd better be prepared in case and that a lot of the discussions around that time had that in mind. So I think we felt it wasn't a purely academic exercise at that stage and there was ... there was a possibility that at some stage we would have to make a call.