Results 13,241-13,260 of 13,375 for speaker:Pat Rabbitte

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: No, you've-----

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: No, you've put it on the record here now-----

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: -----please permit me to answer it. That was an exchange with Sean O'Rourke about a particular advertisement. I was seeking to explain the issue of child benefit and why we pledged to hold it at what it was and why, in the circumstances, we had to make a modest cut in it. And he said, ''You didn't explain any of that at the time, you just kept it simple'', and I said, ''Yes, isn't that...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: No, it was not our approach to go for the cut taxes and cut public spending. I mean, the revenues on the basis of the expert advice available to us suggested that we would have a cake that was large enough to do certain things that we wanted to do. And we didn't resile, in any way, in the discussions with Fine Gael in respect of the things that we wanted to do, for example, in relation to...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: Well, first of all, I don't believe that's the case and, secondly, you are putting words in my mouth that I never said.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: My-----

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: Yes but I'm telling you that the premise of your question is wrong.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: What I have said-----

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: Thanks, Chairman. What I said, Chairman, in the ... in my opening remarks ... what I said is that, in my view, the main cause of the disaster that befell our country was the out of control property bubble based ... spurred on by tax incentives and expansion real estate. That was the cause of it and that was the specific thing I put in my statement. Mr. ... Senator MacSharry is putting a...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: No, I would be more nuanced in my reaction to it. If it were an appropriate benchmarking, I think it had a role to play at the time. But, unfortunately, it became as so many things at that time a vehicle to dish out substantial amounts of money without discernment or discrimination. But the notion of benchmarking in the public service or in the public sector is not a bad one at all. It's...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: The hospitality issue is an issue of transport, is it? I mean if I got a pint at some stage from a developer, is that included in the rubric of your question?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: Not my-----

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: Not that I recall, Senator. I recall travelling to view a business park in Bristol when I was chairman of the county council, or when I was a member of Dublin County Council when we were designing what has now become Citywest Business Park, probably the most prestigious park in the country, and I presume it wasn't Dublin County Council who paid for us to travel. I presume it were the...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: Am I going to tell you?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: Well, I don't think I'm here to pass judgment on my colleagues in other parties. I mean, I don't know, I don't know.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: I don't think it would be appropriate for me to do that, and I don't intend to comment on-----

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: Again, I think the actual context in which this happened is important. I happened purely by accident to meet my colleague Eamon Gilmore very early that morning and, you know, my mouth was open at the news I had just heard. And I briefly discussed it with him. Somebody had already been on to him about dated subordinated debt and he said that he had already decided that we should oppose it...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: I could see the circumstances where - if you get a phone call at half-six in the morning from the Minister for Finance, who has been struggling most of the night with an issue as big as this one where the financial system was at risk, I could see that a party like Fine Gael, whose core existence would be supporting the institutions of the State would say "well if the financial system is at...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: I wouldn't like to claim knowledge that we didn't have. This was just such an enormous insurance bet that we were wagering - literally the deeds of the country - on it never being called in and that was a pretty scary place to be. Now I had advocated personally the nationalisation of Anglo privately and ... a date around this time, it's on the record of the House, an intervention I made to...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: Well, I wasn't the leader of the party. I had stepped down a few months earlier as leader of the party. Somebody in those circumstances does not intrude. I mean, I never opened my mouth at a meeting of the parliamentary party for a year and a half. I was not going to intrude onto the territory of the new leadership.