Results 1,161-1,180 of 4,414 for speaker:Sean Barrett

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (18 Jun 2015)

Sean Barrett: I think we'll note that because we have to take account of measures to prevent any recurrences and so on, so the reforms you've have been talking about are important and commissioning of the Wright report. You say on page 36, in the case of the Financial Regulator, he was not in a position to give the DOF a clear insight into the depth of the problems of the loan books of the individual...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (18 Jun 2015)

Sean Barrett: You also say on page 26 the most difficult relationship was with the ECB. Should a lot of those issues not have been sorted out when we joined the single currency, that we could have assumed that the single currency would be the lender of last resort instead of the fatuous relationship that you describe on page 26? We should have had a working relationship because it was part of the...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (18 Jun 2015)

Sean Barrett: Being in the single currency, all those issues have been supported in 1999 and not in 2008 in the middle of the night.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (18 Jun 2015)

Sean Barrett: Sorry, I'm running out of time, the last one... Lehman Brothers. Isn't the signal not to bemoan Lehman Brothers going bankrupt; it was a signal wholesale reliance on funding for banks has a much higher risk?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (18 Jun 2015)

Sean Barrett: Thank you very much, Chairman, and apologies, Mr. Moran, for that electronic interruption. In that ... what turned out to be your farewell address to the committee on public accounts, where you quoted about the openness in the last paragraph in your own presentation. You also say a couple of pages earlier, back in 2012, like statements of being Irish when abroad, saying one word to the...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (18 Jun 2015)

Sean Barrett: Has the quality of decision making deteriorated, as some commentators would say, since the troika left? Did we lose something when that process ended?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (18 Jun 2015)

Sean Barrett: Thank you on that, and just to reassure you that an awful lot of new Members of the Dáil and Seanad were also elected to come up here at the same time to do the kind of reforms that you've been talking about. So it may be less pessimistic than ... than you illustrated there. Could I ask you about the joint programme for Ireland, the recapitalisation of €10 billion, banking...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (18 Jun 2015)

Sean Barrett: Did you, in your work in the Department, it's been put to us, see a corporate culture change in Irish banks from the ones which you would have grown up with? That's been said in ... a lot of times, not at this committee, but that, when they removed local managers, the thing went haywire and they didn't know who to lend to and then had to come into the Department of Finance looking for...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (18 Jun 2015)

Sean Barrett: Should the capital ratios for banks be raised, doubled, even trebled?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (18 Jun 2015)

Sean Barrett: We've discovered, say, lapses in bank regulation. The system wasn't really working. Was that your experience when you moved in to do the rescue?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (18 Jun 2015)

Sean Barrett: The ... you have, on your Vol. 2, page 20, the Department of Finance qualifications, which was the issue in the Wright report, as you'll recall, and it says there that in 2015, I think this refers to, there were 39 master's and one PhD in economics and, as you know, Mr. Wright felt that that was far too small a percentage, at 7%, and he mentioned, I think, 50%, 60% in Ottawa and 40% in The...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (18 Jun 2015)

Sean Barrett: That's why-----

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (18 Jun 2015)

Sean Barrett: Yes. The quote that I had from professor John FitzGerald at the beginning, he said that is ... that people were less interested in technical detail and more concerned about the politics of situations; that was John's description of .. of the people in the Department of Finance. Is ... was that a contributor?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (18 Jun 2015)

Sean Barrett: Certainly. John FitzGerald's quote, "There was a cultural change in the Department of Finance in the last decade. It became more concerned about the politics of things and less interested in technical detail." And, therefore, he said he would have less interaction.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (18 Jun 2015)

Sean Barrett: Yes.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (18 Jun 2015)

Sean Barrett: Thanks very much, Chairman, and thanks again, Mr. Moran. We've looked at this in this committee, Mr. Moran, at, you know, changes in corporate culture among bankers, auditors, builders, bank regulators, better relationships with the EU and the ECB and so on. And while supporting what you tried to do in the Department of Finance, I could name three projects today where not an ounce of...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (18 Jun 2015)

Sean Barrett: So, have we changed enough in those corporate cultures? Thanks, Chair.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (18 Jun 2015)

Sean Barrett: Was it necessary ... you don't like the split in the Department you say, was it necessary though to do that, to have two Ministers for Finance at a Cabinet?

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (18 Jun 2015)

Sean Barrett: Thank you very much. Thanks, Chairman.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (18 Jun 2015)

Sean Barrett: Thank you, Chairman, and welcome Mr. Moran. The reforms that you've been introducing, indeed over your entire period from 1989 until your appointment as Secretary General, how have you addressed the perceived shortcomings in areas like fiscal strategy, for example?