Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 1 July 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Ms Ann Nolan:

Yes, extremely disappointing. I suppose there are two aspects to that question, Deputy. Obviously the question is could PwC have known better, and I'm not sure whether they could or not. Obviously it was wrong, and I remember at the time, if you look at the ... the first time I saw those reports, summary report, I think it was a bit earlier than the beginning of 2009, some time in 2008, so it was the banks' own projections and the PwC's projections which were stress 1, stress 2, and I remember looking and thinking, "Wouldn't it be wonderful if what happens is the banks' own projections?" Because you don't know the future at any given time, but thinking not very realistic. And then thinking that actually there was a real chance that things were worse than the PwC stress 2 because the economy, you know, with the other side of our hat we were looking at the economy, looking at having done a budget in October, which I was involved in, October 2008, which was out of date already by January '09. So you, kind of, looked at that and thought, you know, "It might be worse than they're saying."