Results 13,261-13,280 of 13,375 for speaker:Pat Rabbitte

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

Pat Rabbitte: I think I was influenced by a number of people who brought the weight of official reports to bear on my argument and said these are the authorities that matter and they say the system is robust. In the environment in which we function, political party making its own forecasts has unfortunately little credibility. You tend to fall back on the agencies, national and international, and they...

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

Pat Rabbitte: I think the main thrust of what I was saying related to the property bubble and the construction sector and we didn't, as I said to Senator MacSharry, we didn't resile from our position on the measures that needed to be taken to rein in the property bubble. We didn't resile from that in any way.

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

Pat Rabbitte: I have to truthfully ... I have to honestly say that no, I didn't think that way Deputy. In hindsight I probably should have but it just did not occur to me that in the context of almost 15 years of growth, an economy that wasn't shaken off course for very long by the dotcom bubble, that had bounced back that had a huge deficit in infrastructure and that was now able to access cheap money to...

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

Pat Rabbitte: In this particular respect?

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

Pat Rabbitte: Well, I don't think that the theatre of the Dáil Chamber is particularly effective in terms of Opposition holding Government to account. If you take the Leaders' Questions moment, which was introduced only latterly, you know, the Opposition take up the issue of the day, whatever party is in opposition, they take up ... whatever is the issue du jouris the issue that they run with, with...

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

Pat Rabbitte: Well, I think it is very important. I would disagree with the Chairman if his question to Deputy Burton implies that he believes there would have been close contact between the leadership of an Opposition party and, say, the senior officials in the Department of Finance. That did not happen in my experience. Yes, I personally had interaction with senior officials in the Department of...

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

Pat Rabbitte: I ... the only area-----

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

Pat Rabbitte: Yes. The only area that I think it operated on very carefully, and in a structured way and in a careful way, was in ... with respect to Northern Ireland. There certainly was regular contact there. And on particular pieces of legislation, there would be that kind of contact. But, in terms of ... you know, Government - whatever Government - tends to keep its cards very close to its chest...

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

Pat Rabbitte: I'm ... I'm not so sure that in terms of the particular issue that we're talking about ... I wouldn't be that critical of the Minister of the day in terms of him not sharing the information that there were deep concerns in his Department about the future of the banking system and that options were being examined and being prepared. I mean, if that information had come out it would have...

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

Pat Rabbitte: Well, I think that particular conclusion related to the concern that was there at the time that the consumer dimension was virtually ignored by the Central Bank; that the Central Bank saw its job as the prudential supervision of the banking sector and it was not concerned with consumer issues and there were a number of conflagrations about consumers being done down and it not having been...

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

Pat Rabbitte: I still don't know enough about it, Senator, it's a complex issue. We're operating nowadays in a global financial market and we can't afford not to have regard to that fact. I mean, light touch ... light-touch regulation is ... or principles-based regulation is one thing but derelict regulation is a different thing and it seems to me that we've had derelict regulation. You know, if you...

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

Pat Rabbitte: Yes. But it's not with regard to a particular committee, Senator. It is my conviction that the network of committees that we have established are too onerous for a small House to bear. I'm not talking about the quality or the membership of a particular committee, but if you have 650 members in a parliament, as does the neighbouring Parliament, it tends to develop specialisation. It tends...

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

Pat Rabbitte: Well, I'm referring, if my memory serves, in particular to the evidence we heard from Mr. Cardiff, when he named certain individuals that he believed were or might have been in contact, to press a particular point of view. You know, and its a matter for the inquiry to establish whether that was purely a patriotic compulsion based on the fact that the people concerned have specialist...

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

Pat Rabbitte: Well, I think the decision by the former finance ... the late Brian Lenihan, to put in somebody of Patrick Honohan's acknowledged international standing in terms of regulation I think was major decision. It broke this automatic entitlement that was there for Secretaries General of the Department of Finance to pass on to automatically ... it seems to me, automatically becoming Governors of...

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

Pat Rabbitte: I think there is a distinction, probably, to be drawn between what are now called the pillar banks and Anglo Irish.

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

Pat Rabbitte: My opinion is that their opinion was that it was indeed insolvent. That's my belief and they couldn't have believed otherwise, given what had happened over the previous months. Not just the St. Patrick's Day massacre but generally what was the word on the street. And I've always thought and I, you know-----

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

Pat Rabbitte: May I just say this, Deputy-----

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

Pat Rabbitte: Well, the question was relating to the Department of Finance. And I think that in the case of the Department of Finance, I think they had to have that suspicion or conviction, I don't know which. I mean, I always thought in watching the former Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, before the committee, I always thought that the question that the committee should have asked him that they didn't asking him...

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

Pat Rabbitte: I think, Deputy McGrath, we knew enough about banking to know the difference between liquidity and solvency. And I can't speak for the present Finance Minister but I know what I was trying to find out was, well is it true that it's only a liquidity crisis? And, quite honestly, I thought it was no more than just a liquidity crisis until immediately around that period when I began to have...

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

Pat Rabbitte: No, no, no. I don't mean ... I don't mean to do that and I haven't asserted any definitive statement. I'm only guessing, you asked me to guess at the frame of mind of the man when the questions were put him.