"This time banks can be and will be…part of the solution rather than being the problem. The payment breaks are the most visual example of that, maybe, the most direct one." The words of Peter Roebben, the chief executive of KBC Bank Ireland this week, when I asked him whether he thought the Covid-19 crisis is a good test of whether claims of cultural change at Irish banks including his own are genuine, or have just been empty words.
The last financial crisis here was in large part caused by Irish banks. They lent too much, to the wrong people, on foolish terms and the ultimate gross cost of their folly was a bailout bill of €64bn (€48bn net) paid by Irish taxpayers.