Results 3,441-3,460 of 16,492 for speaker:Ciarán Lynch

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (1 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: Final question.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (1 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: Senator Sean Barrett. Senator, 25 minutes.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (1 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: Are you talking about James Bond or a politician there like?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (1 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: All right.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (1 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: Very good. Can I just deal with a couple of matters there, if you don't mind, before we move on? Just in follow up there to Senator Barrett's question, Mr. McNally, and it's just to ask that after 2004, did you or the Department undertake any additional or new reviews on housing completions and the impact upon economic growth?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (1 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: Okay. And maybe if I could-----

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (1 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: Yes, sure.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (1 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: And that kind of brings me into the space of the whole issue of a soft landing and what attempts were made to quantify the effects of a soft landing and what impact this would have on Government finances in terms of loss of revenue and increased expenditure and so forth, and what advice was given to Government on this regard. So maybe if I could ask you to recall, what was the discussion...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (1 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: Yes.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (1 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: You didn't see any proof yourself. Is that what you're saying, is it?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (1 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: Okay. Maybe if I can draw attention to one document there. It's in your evidence book and it's the Central Bank 2007 annual report and a summary is given at the top of it there, Mr. McNally:... the Central Bank is forecasting that growth in both GDP and GNP terms will be "significantly less than 1 per cent" this year, with some modest improvement in prospect next year with growth forecast...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (1 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: Yes.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (1 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: Yes, but the general projection of that advice, yes?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (1 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: Yes, okay. And was this the advice that was being given to Government from the Department of Finance then as to how to base your budgets and decisions upon?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (1 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: Right, okay. Looking back at it now, given that a lot of these figures were based upon the construction sector, incomes coming from consumption taxes, a lot of them construction-related, so you'd have the VAT on a house being constructed, you'd have white goods that would come afterwards, carpets and all the rest of it, and 24% of the Irish economy and the construction sector employment...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (1 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: And where did that gap of information or knowledge of awareness come from? It would have been ... the general discourse at the time would have been morning, noon and night, every radio show, newspaper had property construction or something very much to the forefront.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (1 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: Was there any evidence that the Department of Finance, to your knowledge, engaged, researched, carried out, that supported their soft landing theory or was it drawn from external commentaries and a general consensus, or was there a hard book-----

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (1 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: I just need you to ... to clarify that with you. Is it that this was a mirroring and a re-echoing of ... it's like somebody going ... if I was heading to the doctor this morning and somebody says, "You're all right, you don't have to go to the doctor." And I go up to the doctor and I says, "Well, I don't need to be here this morning, because somebody said I'm all right on my way down."...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (1 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: Okay. And what detail was that diagnostics carried out at? How detailed and how in-depth?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (1 Jul 2015)

Ciarán Lynch: Okay.