Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 24 June 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Photo of Eoghan MurphyEoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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You have given us a huge amount of information about processes leading up to the negotiations with the troika and the formal negotiations and the conclusion. But I just want to look at the relationship, maybe, between the Irish Government and the troika partners and in particular, the ECB and I want to look at some of the language you use in relation to the ECB at various parts of your long statement. You talk about the "fiction that the ECB was present in negotiations only to do with banking matters"; "an increasingly hectoring tone on the part of the ECB'' - this is in October after the Deauville Declaration; then moving into November, "increasingly strident rhetoric from the ECB"; "the ECB's panicky state of mind"; the November Trichet letter to Lenihan was "a very direct warning and threat"; "It is easy to attribute a bullying attitude in retrospect"; on recapitalising the banking system, "the ECB had a different agenda"; on the proposed interest rate, "ECB showed a little less solidarity''; on burden-sharing you talk about "the fallacy that the ECB was simply giving advice". So what was the relationship with the ECB like? And do you blame the ECB for the fact that we had to enter a bailout? And do you blame them for those terms that were not favourable to Ireland in that final agreement?