Anglo chairman Dukes stands over debt warning

The Chairman of Anglo Irish Bank says we still may not have seen the full extent of our banking problem.

Alan Dukes says that so much of the Government's effort has been understandably targeted at firefighting in the crisis, we have not yet looked at how the 'building' will look once that fire has been dealt with.

He is also stood over his assertion that the banking recapitalisation requirement could hit €50bn.

He says an extra 15bn is what he thinks is needed to further sustain banks coming out of a downturn.

"The bottom line of it is, when you look at the various elements: the capitalisation of the banks, there’s the funding of the warehousing of assets in Nama and other asset recovery vehicles in the meantime, and there’s the extent to the irrecoverable losses that are already there, it becomes very, very clear that there can’t be just an Irish resolution of this problem," he said.

Responding to Mr Dukes' comments this morning, Finance Minister Brian Lenihan expressed his satisfaction with the governor of the Central Bank's assessment of the banking requirements.

"His current assessment was that he would be surprised and disappointed if the figure of €35bn had to met, let alone the figure of 50bn," said Minister Lenihan.

"I think it is a mistake for Alan Dukes to generalise from what he found in a I b into every other bank, because every time we’ve stress-tested the banks and done enquires into the banks, we’ve found that Anglo Irish Bank was in a far worse position than any of the other financial institutions, except of course Irish Nationwide."