Results 3,601-3,620 of 4,414 for speaker:Sean Barrett
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)
Sean Barrett: I thank the Tánaiste for her important input on that. Just a final one, thank you, Chairman. If this committee, Deputy, was chosen from 650 people, would it be any better than what you've heard this afternoon? That's a question you raise on page 3, I think.
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)
Sean Barrett: Thank you very much.
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)
Sean Barrett: Thank you, Chairman, and I echo the Chairman's welcome to you here this evening, Mr. O'Reilly.
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)
Sean Barrett: You say in your statement that you made contributions to various political parties. I think page 10 has that you made €74,000 over a six-year period.
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)
Sean Barrett: Was there any relationship between political contributions from the property sector and the regime of property tax incentives and reliefs such as urban renewal in the pre-crisis period?
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)
Sean Barrett: Are those kind of tax breaks which, as you know, have been a large part of the agenda here, are ... did you experience those in any other countries?
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)
Sean Barrett: Okay, yes. Good, thanks.
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)
Sean Barrett: Now, on page 5 you say that there were ... there's clearly too much debt freely available to too many borrowers. This led to a glut of inexperienced developers. Who were they and could you describe how they intruded?
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)
Sean Barrett: But, on the other hand, a lot of very big people went into NAMA. It wasn't just the small fellows.
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)
Sean Barrett: Yes.
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)
Sean Barrett: On page 4, you're describing the lenders ... and we'll come to the banks presently. The steps taken by a lender when evaluating your proposal and it's quite comprehensive, all the items that you list there, and, you know, you paint them as pretty rigorous. Did those standards drop in a kind of euphoria in the property sector?
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)
Sean Barrett: Did the banks change-----
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)
Sean Barrett: Yes. Did the banks change? Because-----
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)
Sean Barrett: Did the banks change? Because they all went broke in a system where there hadn't been any bankruptcies for 170-180 years. Did you see a change in the corporate culture of banks in Ireland?
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)
Sean Barrett: But other people must have had doubts, because their share prices were plummeting for a good while before the crash.
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)
Sean Barrett: And what's your current situation? Since the crisis, what's it like trying to do business in the property sector in Ireland now?
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)
Sean Barrett: And you're expecting 100% on that, is that ... that in your concluding remark?
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)
Sean Barrett: In all your experience in the house building, the Castlethorn part, we've watched here data that in the 1990s a house was two and a half times average income and at the peak it went up to 12. How did you see that process going? Were houses going to get more and more outside the reach of average people?
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)
Sean Barrett: We have various evidence supplied to us of €6,000 development levies in some counties and substantial tax levies implicit in the retail price of a house ... Ronan Lyons from TCD, whom you know from the daft.iewebsite. Is there any work going on between the industry and public policy makers to try to make the house price back to a more reasonable multiple of average earning?
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)
Sean Barrett: And thank you for that, and particularly for the people watching in, is there a target? Are we going to try to get five times average earnings of a house price or-----