Results 161-180 of 13,375 for speaker:Pat Rabbitte

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: Yes. The only area that I think it operated on very carefully, and in a structured way and in a careful way, was in ... with respect to Northern Ireland. There certainly was regular contact there. And on particular pieces of legislation, there would be that kind of contact. But, in terms of ... you know, Government - whatever Government - tends to keep its cards very close to its chest...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: I'm ... I'm not so sure that in terms of the particular issue that we're talking about ... I wouldn't be that critical of the Minister of the day in terms of him not sharing the information that there were deep concerns in his Department about the future of the banking system and that options were being examined and being prepared. I mean, if that information had come out it would have...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: Well, I think that particular conclusion related to the concern that was there at the time that the consumer dimension was virtually ignored by the Central Bank; that the Central Bank saw its job as the prudential supervision of the banking sector and it was not concerned with consumer issues and there were a number of conflagrations about consumers being done down and it not having been...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: I still don't know enough about it, Senator, it's a complex issue. We're operating nowadays in a global financial market and we can't afford not to have regard to that fact. I mean, light touch ... light-touch regulation is ... or principles-based regulation is one thing but derelict regulation is a different thing and it seems to me that we've had derelict regulation. You know, if you...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: Yes. But it's not with regard to a particular committee, Senator. It is my conviction that the network of committees that we have established are too onerous for a small House to bear. I'm not talking about the quality or the membership of a particular committee, but if you have 650 members in a parliament, as does the neighbouring Parliament, it tends to develop specialisation. It tends...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: Well, I'm referring, if my memory serves, in particular to the evidence we heard from Mr. Cardiff, when he named certain individuals that he believed were or might have been in contact, to press a particular point of view. You know, and its a matter for the inquiry to establish whether that was purely a patriotic compulsion based on the fact that the people concerned have specialist...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: Well, I think the decision by the former finance ... the late Brian Lenihan, to put in somebody of Patrick Honohan's acknowledged international standing in terms of regulation I think was major decision. It broke this automatic entitlement that was there for Secretaries General of the Department of Finance to pass on to automatically ... it seems to me, automatically becoming Governors of...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: I think there is a distinction, probably, to be drawn between what are now called the pillar banks and Anglo Irish.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: My opinion is that their opinion was that it was indeed insolvent. That's my belief and they couldn't have believed otherwise, given what had happened over the previous months. Not just the St. Patrick's Day massacre but generally what was the word on the street. And I've always thought and I, you know-----

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: May I just say this, Deputy-----

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: Well, the question was relating to the Department of Finance. And I think that in the case of the Department of Finance, I think they had to have that suspicion or conviction, I don't know which. I mean, I always thought in watching the former Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, before the committee, I always thought that the question that the committee should have asked him that they didn't asking him...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: I think, Deputy McGrath, we knew enough about banking to know the difference between liquidity and solvency. And I can't speak for the present Finance Minister but I know what I was trying to find out was, well is it true that it's only a liquidity crisis? And, quite honestly, I thought it was no more than just a liquidity crisis until immediately around that period when I began to have...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: No, no, no. I don't mean ... I don't mean to do that and I haven't asserted any definitive statement. I'm only guessing, you asked me to guess at the frame of mind of the man when the questions were put him.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: I think that he was asking himself the questions and I think the fact that there was legislation in the Department, ready to go, for the nationalisation of Anglo Irish ... I think is, you know, kind of circumstantial ... evidence that there were concerns within the Department too that was wider than the Minister.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Latest Eurozone Developments and Future Implications for Euro Currency: Discussion (15 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: I thank the witnesses for attending. We have had a very long term and the buckets and spades are in the back of the car. We did not need to be sent away in the mood they have induced. They have given a very baleful assessment - although being baleful is not a reason not to analyse it. However, the commentary amounts to an indictment of how the Union does its business today and secondarily...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Latest Eurozone Developments and Future Implications for Euro Currency: Discussion (15 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: Maybe, but I do not think that is a solution. Since the "Mercozy" creation, the Union has not been run in the way it used to be in the time of Jacques Delors and Roy Jenkins. The arrival of the French President Mr. Hollande has not changed that very much. That raises many questions and many people are concerned about whether the Union is becoming one for corporates rather than for...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Latest Eurozone Developments and Future Implications for Euro Currency: Discussion (15 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: At the worst point, it was 119%.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Latest Eurozone Developments and Future Implications for Euro Currency: Discussion (15 Jul 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: They have taken people back.

Order of Business (30 Jun 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: They are only codding the Deputy.

Credit Unions: Motion (Resumed) [Private Members] (24 Jun 2015)

Pat Rabbitte: I do not want to go back over the arguments that have been advanced about the merits of the credit union movement because they are very well known to us. Also well known to us is the intervention of the current Government during the difficulties a small number of credit unions ran into. I am concerned about the protection of the unique ethos of the credit union movement. I have some...