Anglo: 2008 guarantee a ‘fix up’ for insolvent banks

The 2008 blanket bank guarantee was a “fix up” designed to give “insolvent” Irish institutions emergency funding they should never have received, with the “politically biased” error ultimately forcing the ECB to impose the November 2010 bailout when the full crisis emerged.

Financial expert Prof Gregory Connor made the claim as he insisted the Irish banking sector was effectively insolvent and €51bn in the red at the time of the guarantee, despite claiming to be only suffering from manageable “liquidity” issues.

Speaking at the latest meeting of the cross-party Oireachtas banking inquiry, the NUI Maynooth economics lecturer said the €64bn September 2008 measure should never have happened and the “costly error” directly led to the troika coming to Ireland just 26 months later.