Parliamentary Inquiries
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HOUSES OF THE OIREACHTAS Volume 2 No. 35 Morning No. 36 Afternoon AN COMHCHOISTE FIOSRÚCHÁIN I DTAOBH NA GÉARCHÉIME BAINCÉI- REACHTA JOINT COMMITTEE OF INQUIRY INTO THE BANKING CRISIS Déardaoin, 25 Meitheamh 2015 Thursday, 25 June 2015 The Committee met at 9 a.m. MEMBERS PRESENT: Deputy Pearse Doherty, Senator Sean D. Barrett, Deputy Joe Higgins, Senator Michael D’Arcy, Deputy Michael McGrath, Senator Marc MacSharry, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, Senator Susan O’Keeffe. Deputy Kieran O’Donnell, Deputy John Paul Phelan, DEPUTY CIARÁN LYNCH IN THE CHAIR. 1 NEXUS PHASE Nexus Phase Central Bank-Financial Regulator - Professor Patrick Honohan Chairman: As we have a quorum, the Committee of the Inquiry into the Banking Crisis is now in public session. And can I ask members and those in the public Gallery to ensure that their mobile devices are switched off. Session 1 of today’s hearings is a discussion with Profes- sor Patrick Honohan, Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland. In that regard, I would like to welcome everyone to the public hearing of Joint Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis. Today we will continue our hearings with senior figures from the Central Bank who had key roles during the crisis period. This morning and this afternoon we will hear from Professor Patrick Honohan, Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland. When Professor Honohan appeared before this inquiry earlier this year the purpose was specifically to discuss his report on the banking crisis. In this morning’s session we will focus upon the period of Professor Honohan’s tenure, from his appointment in September 2009 to October 2010, while this afternoon’s session will focus on developments in the period from November 2010 to December 2013. The then Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland, Patrick Honohan, was appointed on 26 September 2009. Before his appointment as Governor, he was Professor of International Financial Economics and Development at Trinity College Dublin from 2007. Prior to this he spent almost a decade at the World Bank, where he was a senior adviser on financial sector policy. He recently announced his intention to retire later this year. Professor Honohan, you’re very welcome before the inquiry this morning. Professor Patrick Honohan: Thanks very much, Chairman. Chairman: Before hearing from the witness, I wish to advise the witness that by virtue of section 17(2)(l) of the Defamation Act 2009, witnesses are protected by absolute privilege in respect of their evidence to this committee. If you’re directed by the Chairman to cease giving evidence in relation to a particular matter and you continue to do so, you are entitled thereafter only to a qualified privilege in respect of your evidence. You’re directed that only evidence connected with the subject matter of these proceedings is to be given. I would remind members and those present that there are currently criminal proceedings ongoing and further criminal proceedings are scheduled during the lifetime of the inquiry which overlap with the subject matter of the inquiry. Therefore, the utmost caution should be taken not to prejudice those proceedings. In addition, there are particular obligations of professional secrecy on officers of the Central Bank and the IFSRA in respect of confidential information they’ve come across in the course of their duties. This stems from European and Irish law, including section 33AK of the Central Bank Act 1942. The banking inquiry also has obligations of professional secrecy in some of the terms of information which has been provided to it by the Central Bank. These obligations have been taken into account by the committee and will affect the questions asked and the answers which can be lawfully given in today’s proceedings. In particular, it will mean that some infor- mation can be dealt with in a summary or aggregate basis only, such that individual institutions may not be identifiable. Members of the public are reminded that photography is prohibited in the committee room. To assist the smooth running of the inquiry, we will display certain documents on the screens 2 JOINT COMMITTEE OF INQUIRY INTO THE BANKING CRISIS here in the committee room. For those sitting in the Gallery, these documents will be displayed on the screens to your left and right and members of the public and journalists are reminded that these documents are confidential and they should not be published ... none of those documents should be published or so displayed. The witness has been directed to attend a meeting of the Joint Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis, you have been furnished with booklets of core documents, these are before the Committee, will be relied upon in questioning and form part of the evidence of the Inquiry. So with that said, if I can now ask the clerk to administer the oath to Governor Honohan please. The following witness was sworn in by the Clerk to the Committee: Professor Patrick Honohan, Governor, Central Bank. Professor Patrick Honohan: So my introductory remarks today, Cathaoirleach, will neces- sarily have to be very selective to respect the time limits. So I’ll cover, in essentially chrono- logical order, matters that were dealt with in my written statement. First, the recapitalisation of the banks in 2010 in the context of NAMA purchases, then the September 2010 bank funding cliff, the move to the EU-IMF programme in November 2010 - which, understandably, is this afternoon’s topic but I’ll cover it all in one ... remarks today - the programme structure and, finally, the improved funding conditions which helped to make the programme a success. I will conclude with a few remarks about institutional change. So on recapitalisation of the banks, given the existence of the watertight guarantee enacted through the CIFS legislation of October 2008, in designing policy with regard to bank capi- talisation I was guided by a fixed principle, informed by the Central Bank’s statutory mandate, that any event of default by a bank - as would trigger a large cash call on the State - was to be avoided in view of the financial instability that this would cause. In practice, this implied that the Central Bank had to ensure that all of the guaranteed banks would continue to maintain regulatory capital compliant with international standards. This would help ensure that they had access to the ECB standard liquidity facilities as well as, where necessary, ELA. As the NAMA purchases would necessarily be staggered over a period of months, the Central Bank decided to take the announcement of the valuations of the first tranche of NAMA loan purchases as the occasion to establish the necessary capital infusions for Allied ... for AIB, Bank of Ireland and EBS, the going concern guaranteed banks selling loans into NAMA. When they became available late March 2010, the initial NAMA valuations, based only on the handful of exposures that had been fully valued in time for that date ... these entailed much higher percentage losses than had been generally expected by industry specialists. So the capi- tal requirements announced by the Central Bank at the end of March 2010 - in what was known as PCAR 2010 - assumed that all of the NAMA purchases would involve haircuts as large as the first tranche. They also took account of forward-looking loss estimates in a base case and stress scenario of the non-NAMA books. For example, a flat 5% loan loss estimate much higher than that assumed by the banks’ managements themselves was applied to the residential mortgage portfolios. Given the prevailing uncertainty surrounding these badly impaired portfolios, there was still a large margin of error which might eventually consume the apparent surplus above the international minima ... the international capital standard minima. Unfortunately, the later tranches of NAMA purchases which became available in August and September did imply much higher losses, with the result that additional capital requirements had to be announced in September for AIB and also for Anglo at that time - in that case because of Anglo manage- ment’s estimate of additional costs implied by the wind-down plan that the Government had just already announced in the same month. 3 NEXUS PHASE Now, the September 2010 bank funding cliff. Faced with a steep cliff of bank liabilities ... liability maturities in September 2010, I gave some consideration to possible alternative courses of action which might be recommended to Government. As explained in my written statement, the only safe way forward seemed to continue to rely on ELA while also pursuing all possible steps to rebuild confidence and recognising that recourse to an IMF programme would be the fall-back position. By that month, September 2010, most informed international observers began to factor in a likely need for Ireland to enter a programme of official financial assistance. The main influences were the perspective rapid increase in ELA - due to the funding cliff, which arose because it was the end of the initial guarantee period - and the growing evidence that the Government’s multi-year fiscal plan at that stage would not stabilise the debts ... the State’s debt dynamics. The drip feed of bad news about bank recapitalisation needs did not help. Now, the move to the EU-IMF programme: by 4 November 2010, when spreads on ten-year bonds exceeded 500 basis points or five percentage points and depositor outflows were accel- erating, also reflecting a loss of confidence, it was clear to me that application for a programme could no longer safely be deferred and by, well, the following week, I guess, 11 November, the Minister for Finance had agreed to exploratory discussions with troika officials in Brussels.