Results 6,261-6,280 of 27,019 for speaker:Michael Noonan

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)

Michael Noonan: This is the issue that when every secured creditor is repaid by the liquidators the residue will go to the unsecured creditors. And there is a hierarchy of unsecured creditors with subordinate bondholders towards the end of the line and if the surplus is sufficiently large some subordinate bondholders may benefit from the proceeds of the liquidation. Under law, as it stands at the moment,...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)

Michael Noonan: I don't know what the situation was around the time of the guarantee because that was long before I took up office but I know, from my subsequent interaction in Europe, that many Ministers in Europe and many treasuries in Europe and many bank governors in Europe were upset about the fact that Ireland introduced a blanket guarantee unilaterally. So there was relationships to be repaired,...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)

Michael Noonan: Well, on the, whether it was the young or the old or everybody, I mean everybody suffered. That's the first thing. This was an absolute catastrophe. And there have been about 80 financial crises across the world since 1975. And, there's no popular way or pleasant way of dealing with them. And as always, there's always pain and suffering, and universally in Ireland, people suffered. Did...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)

Michael Noonan: But you see, that question, if I say yes or no suggests that there were people making representations on my behalf. You know, I don't believe there were. So I don't know what the basis of it is, and I can't inquire because if I inquire I'm contravening the inquiry that is now put in place under Judge Cregan. I can't go around the Department asking officials "Were you the person referred to...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)

Michael Noonan: My position is that I don't know whether it's, it was accurate or not. I know that from what was said in the newspapers, it wasn't direct evidence, which was what I was suggesting to Deputy Doherty. It's, supposedly, an e-mail by an employee of IBRC, on his interpretation of a supposed conversation with an official of the Department, who supposedly gave a view on what his Minister might...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)

Michael Noonan: I was aware of it, I was aware of it when I read a record, an account of Mr. Aynsley's evidence in the newspapers.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)

Michael Noonan: That was the first time I became aware of it.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)

Michael Noonan: Well, you see, there is a commission of inquiry, there's a specific terms of reference about how the Department of Finance and the Minister for Finance carried out their functions in relation to IBRC. And, I can't see how I can do a preview of anything here today, which relates to that term of reference.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)

Michael Noonan: I mean, I'm not refusing to answer the question.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)

Michael Noonan: I read the papers like everybody else, so quite clearly there was a bad relationship between Mr. Aynsley and certain officials of the Department, but whether any of that is relevant to anything, I don't know.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)

Michael Noonan: Well, I mean, how do you adjudicate on the relationship between two people who meet each other and talk to each other regularly in the line of business, and are entitled to do so? I mean, it's not the Minister's job to assess the level of, the level of relationships between people.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)

Michael Noonan: I'm sure there were because there's a whole series of PQs that were recited over the last six months.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)

Michael Noonan: There are three different reports into the crisis in Ireland and in a number of the reports, and particularly in the Wright report if I recall it correctly, there’s a reference to the fact that within Government Departments that there wasn’t a welcome for people putting an opposite view to whatever the convention and wisdom was and I think the same would have happened across...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)

Michael Noonan: My recall of it was that the troika were very proper in their relationships with the Government and the Government parties and with the Opposition parties. And while they briefed me and the Fine Gael Front Bench extensively around the time the programme was being drawn up, there was no contact with them during the election campaign and there was no contact with them when Labour and Fine Gael...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)

Michael Noonan: -----they were keeping the Opposition informed because all the polls at the time were saying there’d probably be a change of Government.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)

Michael Noonan: Well, I mean, it wouldn’t be possible for a central supervisor in Frankfurt to supervise the multiplicity of banks there are across Europe. So there would have to be a delegation of authority to local central banks. And so it depends on the really ... the value of the banks or the capitalisation level of the banks and I think it’s sufficient to do what they’re doing....

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)

Michael Noonan: Thank you, Senator.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)

Michael Noonan: I’m sorry, who?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)

Michael Noonan: Yes, I did. Yes, I’m an optimist, you know. I thought it was a pretty good programme and, as I said, Brian Lenihan was held in high regard in Europe and I thought that it was a programme sufficient for the disaster that the country was facing. I’m not saying, like, that in your career as a politician you’d be wishing for a programme like this or that it’d be the...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)

Michael Noonan: Yes, there was a feeling around among politicians in Europe and among people in banks and various treasuries that Ireland was hard done by. And you know, kind of ... it was never said openly but the, kind of, messaging I was getting that, "We couldn’t let you do what you wanted to do when you were restructuring the banks, but we’ll try and accommodate you somewhere else", you...