Results 3,281-3,300 of 16,492 for speaker:Ciarán Lynch

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (2 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: Okay.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (2 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: ... more explicitly in that timeline.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (2 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: Okay. Mr. Cowen, I'm going to try and wrap things up for lunch. I just need to get through one question with you, invite the two leads in, and hopefully we'll be out of here by 2.30 for an hour, at least. If I can just bring the first document up there, it's the business planning review meeting with the MAC and it's of 19 November 2004, okay? And if I can just go to page 3 of it here, it...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (2 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: Had you become aware, or were you involved at some point during your tenure as Finance Minister in the fact that e-mails and speaking note recommendations from assistant principal Mackle were revised by superiors in the Department in order not to reflect these strong concerns?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (2 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: Okay. Would you have been broadly cognisant of the concerns, though, that were expressed by Ms Mackle? Was that a general discourse that was, to your knowledge, that ... as having been out there and been reflective of concerns with regard to the whole construction industry, and where it was actually going, and the State's dependency in terms of cyclical taxes and so forth?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (2 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: So this is what was happening in the Department of Finance and what was happening out on the street was as follows, if I can bring this one up here, which is residential house prices were escalating at a very, very rapid rate, if you'll see the chart coming up in front of you there, and particularly so since the reversal of what might be called the Bacon measures. And we see house prices...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (2 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: But we increased supply, and I think we actually ... I think this was research I carried out in the previous Administration, and I can maybe dig out this afternoon ... supply was actually increased, I think, supply was actually increased 60% beyond actually demand, and prices actually went up even further, so the laws of supply and demand didn't actually work in this context.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (2 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: Was ... at any time was it a concern to you that the ... that the old school rule of buying a home, which is three or four times your income, should be over a 20-year schedule would have been the way to buy a house, that that had changed quite significantly, particularly so after the Bacon measures had been taken out, that it was now moving up to 10 to 12 times one's income? The schedules...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (2 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: Did that work?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (2 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: But ... but by 2008 the affordability of buying a house in this country was eight to ten times one's income. It had moved from that. So the ... the ... there was no ... there's no evidence to show-----

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (2 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: -----just the houses on the market made them cheaper-----

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (2 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: -----or made them more affordable.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (2 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: But where's your evidence to say that the ... that the increasing of supply would actually reduce ... or make houses more affordable?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (2 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: But that didn't happen.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (2 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: And ... and ... were tax reliefs creating houses being built in this country to which they weren't really being built for people to purchase? They would have been-----

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (2 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: Holiday homes?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (2 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: Okay.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (2 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: Deputy O'Donnell, wrap up, please.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (2 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: Sorry about the interlude, Deputy. Go on, fire away.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (2 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: Put your question, Deputy.