Results 6,281-6,300 of 10,460 for speaker:Gerry Horkan

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Insurance Costs for Small and Medium Businesses: Discussion (4 Apr 2019)

Gerry Horkan: The balance has, therefore, shifted from equities towards safer-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Insurance Costs for Small and Medium Businesses: Discussion (4 Apr 2019)

Gerry Horkan: The bond yields are low, so FBD is getting less return.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Insurance Costs for Small and Medium Businesses: Discussion (4 Apr 2019)

Gerry Horkan: The return to FBD shareholders needs to come through higher premiums and higher profitability in other sectors because it is not getting it from there. The witnesses can disagree with me if they want, but when interest rates were better from an investment point of view or when bonds were paying out more, that effectively subsidised the shareholder return to an extent or subsidised the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Insurance Costs for Small and Medium Businesses: Discussion (4 Apr 2019)

Gerry Horkan: Is FBD in a position to offer insurance to businesses like play centres, activity centres and so on or is that something it does not do? I took the point the witnesses made earlier that it is generally the farm business and by extension it might be a small pub or a takeaway business attached to the farm or the farmer.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Insurance Costs for Small and Medium Businesses: Discussion (4 Apr 2019)

Gerry Horkan: I accept FBD has a remit, a mission statement and a core business and I am not telling the witnesses what to do. However, it seems from the figures we got this morning that €5 million has been collected in premiums in the past five years, about €200,000 had been paid out and about €800,000 has been placed in reserve against potential future claims. I am sure they are...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Insurance Costs for Small and Medium Businesses: Discussion (4 Apr 2019)

Gerry Horkan: We have had a good session of approximately an hour and a half. Are there are two or three points Mr. McMahon would like to make to sum up before we conclude this session? Getting the level of award down is crucial, obviously.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Insurance Costs for Small and Medium Businesses: Discussion (4 Apr 2019)

Gerry Horkan: It is reasonable to state that there are vested interests at play here. If someone is making 40% of payouts, which was €190 million last year including legal costs, it means FBD paid out between €40 million and €60 million in legal costs last year. Is that a fair assessment?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Insurance Costs for Small and Medium Businesses: Discussion (4 Apr 2019)

Gerry Horkan: Somebody is doing okay out of it.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Insurance Costs for Small and Medium Businesses: Discussion (4 Apr 2019)

Gerry Horkan: I thank Mr. McMahon and Mr. Cahalan from FBD Insurance for their contributions. We will suspend proceedings until 3 p.m., when we will begin our engagement with the chief executive of the Bank of Ireland and her team.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Matters Relating to the Banking Sector: Bank of Ireland (4 Apr 2019)

Gerry Horkan: I welcome Ms Francesca McDonagh and her colleagues, Mr. Gavin Kelly, CEO of Bank of Ireland’s retail Ireland division, Mr. John O'Beirne, head of products, and Mr. Tony McMahon, head of customer loan solutions, to the meeting. I draw the attention of witnesses to the fact that by virtue of section 17(2)(l) of the Defamation Act 2009, witnesses are protected by absolute privilege in...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Matters Relating to the Banking Sector: Bank of Ireland (4 Apr 2019)

Gerry Horkan: I thank Ms McDonagh and call Deputy Doherty.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Matters Relating to the Banking Sector: Bank of Ireland (4 Apr 2019)

Gerry Horkan: I thank Ms McDonagh and her team for attending. Nearly all of the points covered by sections 1 to 6 of the questionnaire have been discussed with the exception of the Central Bank lending rules. I know Ms McDonagh has previously outlined her opinions and thoughts in that regard. Will she give us a summary of her thoughts on these rules? She seems to be happy enough with them and with...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Matters Relating to the Banking Sector: Bank of Ireland (4 Apr 2019)

Gerry Horkan: Is it fair to say that the bank is carrying out more stringent testing on new borrowers in respect of their resilience in the event of a downturn? Nobody can predict the future totally. People can lose jobs and companies can go wallop and so on. Is what happened more than ten years ago now much less likely to happen based on what people are allowed to borrow relative to their circumstances?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Matters Relating to the Banking Sector: Bank of Ireland (4 Apr 2019)

Gerry Horkan: My initial point was about the resilience of the bank's customers, but I take the point that it is important that we have a resilient banking sector. We certainly do not want to see what happened before happen again. In her opening statement Ms McDonagh talked about Brexit. The bank has an economic pulse which comes out every month and has a team of economists within its network looking at...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Matters Relating to the Banking Sector: Bank of Ireland (4 Apr 2019)

Gerry Horkan: Ms McDonagh made a point in her opening statement that new lending was up 13% in 2018 on the previous year and it was the first year of net new lending growth which is a positive statement. Brexit changes every hour. As I have been in this committee room since 9.30 a.m., I do not know what has happened today and it could have entirely changed by the time I finally get to see daylight. It...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Matters Relating to the Banking Sector: Bank of Ireland (4 Apr 2019)

Gerry Horkan: The level of NPEs, at 6.3%, is the lowest for any of the Irish banks. Although the Central Bank has not given Bank of Ireland a target, 5% is a level which the organisation would like to reach. Once it achieves that, is it willing to tolerate that level or would it like to reduce it further to, say, 1%? Will it keep disposing of these types of loans or restructuring them? Ms McDonagh has...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Matters Relating to the Banking Sector: Bank of Ireland (4 Apr 2019)

Gerry Horkan: Is that from an ECB or a Single Supervisory Mechanism perspective?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Matters Relating to the Banking Sector: Bank of Ireland (4 Apr 2019)

Gerry Horkan: In her opening statement, Ms McDonagh focused on Brexit and culture. We have had several meetings with the Banking and Payments Federation Ireland, the Central Bank and the Irish Banking Culture Board. In my time on this committee, four of the five banks have changed chief executives. The cultures are evolving. Some might say they are doing so slowly, while others would say too quickly....

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Matters Relating to the Banking Sector: Bank of Ireland (4 Apr 2019)

Gerry Horkan: The individual accountability framework is for more senior people, but it trickles down to everybody in the organisation. The individuals who are going to be named and held responsible for various parts of the bank will have staff under them who are either doing the right things or the wrong things and being measured for doing the right things, although historically they were measured and...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Matters Relating to the Banking Sector: Bank of Ireland (4 Apr 2019)

Gerry Horkan: What is SMR?