Results 1,161-1,180 of 7,975 for speaker:Joe Higgins

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (28 May 2015)

Joe Higgins: And you referred in your opening to the need for trust, if I understood you correctly, between banks and regulator and you refer on a number of occasions that primary responsibility resided with the banks themselves for much of what they were doing. Mr. Neary, why should you trust the banks? I mean, you're a person more or less of my own generation. Do you not remember in 1984 the scandal...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (28 May 2015)

Joe Higgins: But, Mr. Neary, financial institutions have manifestly betrayed any trust previously which you were well aware of. Mr. Neary, were you a regulator who may have done well in the staid world of Irish banking in the 1950s but were you totally at sea in the cutthroat world of the capitalist financial markets in 2005, for example, whichThe New York Timesdescribed Ireland as the "Wild West of...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (28 May 2015)

Joe Higgins: Mr. Neary, Simon Carswell, a witness to the inquiry, in his opening statement, page 2, said "I ... characterise the relationship between ... the government, the banks and the financial supervisory authorities - as extremely cosy in the period leading up to the 2008 banking crash." Do you agree?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (28 May 2015)

Joe Higgins: Mr. Neary, Deputy Shane Ross wrote a book called The Bankersand in it's prologue, 26 November 2008, page 1:The banking crisis was at fever pitch. The nation's finances were in peril but Ireland's banking elite were celebrating in a private room in a discreet hostelry near Dublin's Stephen's Green ... The bankers were ... careful not to be spotted as they entered and left. Any media story...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (28 May 2015)

Joe Higgins: Yes, 2008. Was it appropriate that such a close social relationship existed-----

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (28 May 2015)

Joe Higgins: Yes, it's not in relation to the guarantee at all.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (28 May 2015)

Joe Higgins: But was it appropriate that such a cosy relationship existed between the tops of the banks and the Financial Regulator?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (28 May 2015)

Joe Higgins: But, Mr. Neary, I don't think you get my point really. I mean, you were the regulators, you were supposed to be the protectors of the ordinary people from what could be predatory practices by these profit-seeking financial institutions. In a sense you were, to use a figure of speech, the gamekeeper. Why would the poachers want to be toasting you?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (28 May 2015)

Joe Higgins: Okay, Mr. Neary, I'll move forward quickly. Mr. Bill Black, a former US regulator, referred to banks like Anglo Irish Bank growing like crazy based on property lending, turning out huge profits and then an inevitable disastrous crash. The loans and advances extended from 1998 to 2008 amounted as ... the growth of those was as follows: Bank of Ireland 325%, which is huge; AIB 330%, which is...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (28 May 2015)

Joe Higgins: Mr. Horan yesterday spoke about his knowledge of the Scandinavian crisis of the '90s. Surely, you would have been aware of that and would have seen that here was lending-----

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (28 May 2015)

Joe Higgins: Would you have been aware of that and the lending of far more reckless character?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (28 May 2015)

Joe Higgins: Mr. Neary, Governor Honohan said in his evidence that the regulator, by not challenging in detail many aspects of the security underlying these huge loans, that the regulators did not realise just how vulnerable the lenders were to property price declines. And even when confronted with evidence that the banks had insufficient info, the regulators failed to grasp the scale of the potential...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (28 May 2015)

Joe Higgins: -----for massive speculation in property. Every day in the newspapers, we had developers announcing prestige projects costing billions or hundreds of millions, clattering around the place in their helicopters. And every year from 1996 to 2006 the price of an ordinary home for a first-time buyer increased each year by the average industrial wage. Young people, in other...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (28 May 2015)

Joe Higgins: -----screwing young people to the wall. How could you not see this and be alarmed to the core? Because, you seemed to sleepwalk through this landscape.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (28 May 2015)

Joe Higgins: Is that true, or not or fair or not?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (28 May 2015)

Joe Higgins: Mr. Neary-----

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (28 May 2015)

Joe Higgins: Weren't ... weren't these rules not a blindfold that you couldn't see the obvious?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (28 May 2015)

Joe Higgins: Mr. Neary, Deputy Doherty already referenced the bank loan book reviews carried out at the instigation of the Central Bank and the regulator just before and just after the guarantee at the end of September and that became subsequently known as the Atlas report.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (28 May 2015)

Joe Higgins: Yes. Did the regulator of the Central Bank carry out any independent probes to test the veracity of the information which the banks gave to those auditing companies?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (28 May 2015)

Joe Higgins: Mr. Neary, isn't ... is it the case that huge Government decisions were made on foot of that information or that it influenced the direction of, and the quantity, for example, later, of recapitalisation amounts? It had huge implications. Why would the word of the banks be accepted without independent testing?