Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 10 June 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Ms Mary O'Dea:

Well, I think throughout 2009 one of the issues that we were most focused on was the quality of the loan books and the portfolio analysis, and as we drilled further and further we could see that there was more and more difficulty.

And I think that's really how that evolved. And I think the situation in relation to Anglo had been complicated by all the other issues that were going on at the time. But I think it was the size and scale of the loss escalated over the period of time. It was necessary, of course, to have ... because despite the fact that Anglo was nationalised, our regulatory relationship with Anglo didn't change in any way. So we still had regulator-to-regulated relationship and the solvency of Anglo was extremely important in terms of providing liquidity because we couldn't allow it to trade or provide services at all unless it was actually solvent.