Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 24 June 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. Kevin Cardiff:

It's a fair question. The answer is no. Nobody that I was aware of was working to hide anything. We wanted the best decision that we could get. Secondly, nobody ... there was no evidence to suggest that INBS was insolvent at that moment. But, certainly, if it had to sell all of its loans straight away or if market conditions deteriorated over time, they would start to burn through their .. first of all, through the whatever profit they were earning, then through their capital and then could eventually fall into a negative capital position. So they were likely at some stage to need capital. Why was the document redacted? It was redacted probably on my judgment for legal reasons or for commercially-sensitive reasons ...sensitivity reasons. But to be clear, Deputy, I spent two hours I believe it was in July 2010 in private session at the public accounts committee - the previous version of it - and we went through the records and I explained why things had been redacted. I explained the philosophy or the approach I had taken to all the redactions. I explained, even, probably going beyond where I should about what was redacted for legal reasons ... or for legal privilege reasons and so forth. So it wasn't that the public accounts committee was given this set of documents and no explanation for redactions. They got explanations for the redactions. But in the end, I had to make a judgment. You might just remember ... well, you won't remember, Deputy, but initially, the public accounts committee asked me for a document ... a single document. I gave a lot more than that because I didn't think they could get a perspective without that. But I had to ... in the light of my job, in the light of the legal position, in the light of the market position, I had to make quite a few redactions which I tried to explain.