Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 15 July 2015
Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis
Nexus Phase
Mr. John Corrigan:
There were ... as I mentioned in my evidence, there were three rounds of recapitalisation. And in the first round, it was very much left up to the NTMA, on foot of a request from the Minister for Finance, to determine some estimate of the likely requirements of the banks for extra capital. And it was on foot of those discussions that the initial capital injections of €3.5 billion in Bank of Ireland and AIB arose. Then things assumed a more orthodox setting, if that's the right word, when, in 2010, the Central Bank did its PCAR. Because, as I said at the outset, the NTMA, in a formal legal sense, had no role in relation to the banking system but we did have substantial assets in the National Pensions Reserve Fund and, through the amendments in the legislation, the Minister took power to be able to direct the fund to invest. And the first investment was ... all three rounds of capitalisation, to the extent that the fund was involved, were done by way of direction from the Minister. But the first round of recapitalisation, the Central Bank really wasn't involved in it and maybe that in itself says something.