Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 8 July 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. Brian Cowen:

How I react to that is, first of all, to say that if you take he says 90% of it... No matter what decision you made that night you were caught with it or you'd a problem, put it that way, I'm not saying you are caught with it - that loss was in the system. But the other statistic he comes up with is as you say an imagined scenario. Now I have looked at the report because Professor Honohan ... I have a lot of respect for the man, obviously, he did a good job when he was in there as Governor, as did his predecessors all worked hard to the best of their ability ... the point is that he is saying in his report that a guarantee was required on the night. Now, he says ... he argues, maybe it shouldn't have been as extensive, and he specifically refers to the dated subordinated debt issue. That's the issue he refers to in his report, which was 3% of the total coverage. Now if I thought for a moment I got something 97% right, instead of 100% right, I'd take the 97%. But the point is that, even on that 3% issue, as you know, none of that dated subordinated debt matured during the two years of the guarantee and, therefore, was substantially haircutted, subsequently, under the eligible liabilities guarantee that we brought in in 2009, when we narrowed the guarantee. And let's remember that we agreed to review the guarantee with the EU within six months, which we did. And the problem of trying to get long-term bond issuance was a critical factor and that's what the eligible liabilities guarantee scheme was about. But we also took the opportunity to narrow the dated subordinated issue because that was, in fairness, again a call. You could, in normal circumstances, leave that out, you know, if you were looking at it in a normal market situation. Just to come to the point. I'm sorry if I'm ... This question of between €2 billion and €10 billion. As you know, that's a pretty big difference between €2 billion and €10 billion, first point