Joe Higgin's Banking Inquiry Report
The Banking Inquiry Why Ireland Experienced a Systemic Banking Crisis Alternative Analysis and Conclusions to the Report of the Joint Oireachtas Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis By Joe Higgins TD, Member of the Joint Committee1 January 27, 2016 Extreme Profiteering driven by corporate greed drove the property bubble and caused the crash; Bubble Governments of Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, Tánaiste Mary Harney, Finance Ministers McCreevy & Cowen served the interests of bankers/developers Not those of ordinary people; Enda Kenny, Fine Gael Leader, was a silent non Opposition Witness after witness at the Banking Inquiry, including bankers and developers themselves, attested to the kind of cut throat competition between them for profit that drove the reckless lending practices that inflated the property/banking bubble and led to the disastrous economic crash. Dermot Gleeson, the Chairman of AIB from 2003 to 2009 testified as to how his bank aped the methods of Anglo Irish Bank which was lending recklessly to developers and raking in major profits. He maintained that they had a problem of: Anglo being held up to us as an exemplar…Commentators in Ireland and abroad repeatedly said, “Anglo is the best bank. Why can’t you be more like Anglo?” It was determined by one international consultancy to be the best bank of its size in the world. It was the darling not just of the Irish but of European stock exchanges generally… Ethna Tinney, who was an independent Non-Executive Director of EBS 2000-2007, told the Inquiry: The belief that there were substantial profits to be made for the society from these developments led us to emulate our peers…There was a sort of feeding frenzy as the banks clambered over one another to get a piece of the action, especially as new foreign banks had entered the market as competitors…There was a sense that we were becoming a minnow as 1 With major technical assistance and research by Diana O’Dwyer 1 INBS expanded its lending and started to post profits that were up to five times the profits we were posting.
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