John Burns

speaker

307 appearances 11 recordings 4 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 6 Aug

John Burns’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 11 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 9.

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The Indo Daily · 'Baddie of the Bailout': How 'Fingers' Michael Fingleton built 'the world's worst bank' · 6 Aug 2026 podcast

So how big did it get and what did Irish Nationwide become like pre, now we know where it ends, but for a time business must have been booming, it must have been a great thing to be the head of.

Business was booming.

By 2007, the profits were up to 390 million.

It was a building society, but the rules changed.

The law changed in 1992, which allowed building societies to do more than just give people mortgages.

It basically allowed them to get into the commercial sphere and to give loans for property development, commercial projects and so on.

And Irish Nationwide did its first deal of that type within a year of the law being changed.

So in 1993, they did a property deal with Sean Mulrhyne in West Dublin and it all took off from there.

But looking back through the accounts of that time, Irish Nationwide went absolutely bonkers between 2004 and 2008.

If the clock had stopped in 2004 and the regulator said, look, everybody put down your pens, stop loaning money, you know, everything stops now, Irish Nationwide would probably have been fine.

It simply gave out so many reckless loans in that final four year period that it blew itself up.

And the central bank did an inquiry into it afterwards.

The report was only published last year because you know how these things take for absolutely ever.

But one thing really struck me that in October 2006, the board of Irish Nationwide approved 37 loans worth over 500 million.

The very next month, November 2006, that same board approved 38 loans worth another 500 million euros.

So in the space of two months, this relatively small building society gave loans worth 1 billion euros.

So that just really illustrates the extent of the madness.

I find myself wondering, well, first of all, to play Davos Advocate, if I may, about this categorical story.

Did everyone not go a bit crazy at that time?

It was hardly a unique thing to Irish Nationwide for a start.

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