Results 441-460 of 4,414 for speaker:Sean Barrett
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)
Sean Barrett: Thank you very much, Mr. Chopra. Thank you, Chairman.
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)
Sean Barrett: Thank you, Chairman, and welcome to Mr. Buti and his colleagues back again. In the European Commission's ex post valuation of Ireland's bailout programme, it stated that the Irish banking sector has been relatively slow to return to profitability, and in the Commission's post-programme surveillance report of spring 2015, reference is made to the low amount of SME financing. In your...
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)
Sean Barrett: When you said we would break the financial and sovereign loop, does that mean that it's the end of "too big to fail" banks or also that no bank should fail, that they would be on their own in the future?
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)
Sean Barrett: Okay.
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)
Sean Barrett: Did the quality of risk-taking in banks decline when the model moved from depositor-saving finance to wholesale and then to emergency financing from the ECB and from central banks? Did you see a decline in the quality of lending and risk assessment by banks in that period?
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)
Sean Barrett: I think we had some banks that had 8% of their lending to industry and agriculture and 88% to property. Would the Commission monitor and seek to rebalance that kind of lending, were it to ... pattern ... were that pattern to recur in the future?
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)
Sean Barrett: Yes. I welcome what you said because, while GDP is growing, the public perceives a massive transfer from them to the financial sector so they are actually still worse off even though GDP is welcome, it's increasing again, so measures to prevent those kind of transfers in the future from the Commission or national central banks, ECB, I think that's what the people want to come from an inquiry...
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)
Sean Barrett: Do we need protection against asset price bubbles? That's my final question.
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)
Sean Barrett: Right.
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)
Sean Barrett: Thank you very much. Thank you, Chair.
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)
Sean Barrett: Thank you very much. And welcome, Minister Noonan. In his testimony to the inquiry, the former chairman of IFSRA, Brian Patterson, noted that the Financial Regulator was reluctant to use its sanctioning powers due to real concerns about legal and possible constitutional challenge. Has that been resolved since as far as we know, Minister?
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)
Sean Barrett: You mentioned in your statement on page 7 that the Wright report identified the Department of Finance as one of the strongest contrarians during the previous decade. But I think there was a reluctance to write things down. Wasn't that one of the problems he found too - what was the nature of the contrarianism? Has that changed in your time?
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)
Sean Barrett: One of the things we found, Minister, was an OECD report being fairly severely censored without being shown to the Minister. Does that custom still-----
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)
Sean Barrett: I think that was in 2008. And some of the things, I think, were interesting about bank resolution and so on and changing bank housing bubble to some word less strong. And it seemed to have developed that the officials got the chance to do this unbeknown to the Minister.
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)
Sean Barrett: Yes.
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)
Sean Barrett: On the same theme, Minister, ringing up the ESRI if they didn't much like what was in a quarterly or in a medium-term review, John FitzGerald referred to something, code-named "Nervous Nellie". He used to ring up if he didn't like what the ESRI was saying. So, I mean, the new dispensation, that kind of-----
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)
Sean Barrett: Of course. The Government economic evaluation service - can it become on the expenditure side the kind of body that IFAC is on the taxation side?
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)
Sean Barrett: I think... when we get legislation in the Seanad or in the Dáil, shouldn't it have economic evaluations attached to it? Regulatory impact assessments seem to be declining in the numbers. In other words, we want to participate in the contrarian views being known. I think it's in the background, Minister, that there was so much consensus/complacency that one has to ensure that doesn't...
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)
Sean Barrett: The public capital programme historically didn't have much in the way of economic appraisals. Should that be changed, given the importance of investment and that it should yield a return and not just leave a bundle of debt for yourself or future Ministers to deal with?
- Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (10 Sep 2015)
Sean Barrett: Was the split of the Department of Finance and public administration and reform, while vital in dealing with the bank crisis ... is it the correct way to go forward into a more non-critical situation?