FitzPatrick spoke of close monitoring in radio interview
“He gets all the information he wishes to get from us,” Mr Fitzpatrick told RTÉ’s Marian Finucane Programme in October, “in relation to lending, in relation to our liquidity and in relation to our deposits and everything. He comes in and does internal audits. He looks at the top 20 or 40 loans, he gets information about various ratios, all of that, and Central Bank will also get that type of information if required as well. That is every quarter and any time they want to make visits to all of the banks.”
Mr FitzPatrick was asked if it would be appropriate that the Government had someone on banks’ credit committees.
“Maybe it is. They certainly get full information from our credit committees. They are given a list of all the loans that are approved. If they want to see the background they have got it all.”
He was asked if generally banks had been reckless in lending money.
“When people ask have banks been reckless, of course banks have made mistakes and Anglo Irish Bank has made mistakes in the past because we are in the business of risk and we have made mistakes and I will admit that.
“Have we been reckless? No, we have not. We cover all our loans in a ‘belt and braces’ way. Ask any of our customers about that. We do not believe we have been reckless. I don’t believe we have ever given 100% loans in our lives anywhere.
“We are in the business of making money. We are business people and what we want to do is not be reckless.”
Mr FitzPatrick was asked about allegations the Irish Stock Exchange was investigating a number of share dealings in Anglo Irish Bank, including those by himself and fellow director Lar Bradshaw. It was revealed he had bought €1.1m worth of shares. He denied there was anything inappropriate.
“I did, like other directors have done in the past, show confidence in our shares by taking money out of my own resources to buy shares in Anglo Irish Bank. It was the only way I could articulate in a very clear way to a wide audience that I believed in Anglo Irish Bank and that is what I did. I have been in banking for 35 years. Clearly I had to go through a process to get that cleared with the company secretary, the chief executive of the bank and that is what I did. There is no sense that there was anything done improperly.”
