I made mistakes, says Bank of Ireland boss ahead of crisis inquiry hearings

By Padraic Halpin

DUBLIN, Feb 27 (Reuters) - Bank of Ireland Chief Executive Richie Boucher said he had made mistakes in the run-up to the Irish banking crisis and will take full responsibility for them when he appears before a parliamentary inquiry.

Parliament is holding the public inquiry into the crisis seven years after the near-collapse of the banking sector, with many voters frustrated that bank executives, regulators and politicians have not been held accountable.

Irish taxpayers had to stump up 64 billion euros ($72 billion) - equivalent to around 40 percent of annual economic output - to rescue the banking sector. Bank of Ireland (Other OTC: IRLD - news) received 4.8 billion euros, though it has since returned more than that amount to the state.

Boucher, who was head of Bank of Ireland's retail division before becoming CEO six years ago, has been asked to appear before the inquiry alongside former colleagues Richard Burrows and Brian Goggin and former executives from Allied Irish Banks and Royal Bank of Scotland (LSE: RBS.L - news) 's Ulster Bank unit.

"I was part of a management team, I made those mistakes," Boucher told a news conference on Friday, a day after the inquiry's committee asked him to give evidence in the next set of hearings, which begin on April 22.

"You can't separate yourself from funding decisions, capital decisions by the fact that someone else might have had that responsibility - they are management decisions. You make collective decisions."

Among the mistakes, Boucher said, was coming into the downturn with too little capital, an over-reliance on wholesale funding and flaws in the bank's understanding and analysis of risk.

Boucher said the bank had learned from those mistakes, appointing a risk committee in 2009, giving clearer management guidelines and encouraging an environment where executives can be challenged.

Had they not done so, Boucher said it would have been impossible to convince investors such as Fairfax Financial (Other OTC: FAXRF - news) Holdings founder Prem Watsa and U.S. billionaire Wilbur Ross to invest in the bank in 2011 and save it from majority state ownership.

"What happened happened, we deeply regret that, but what's happened since has also happened," Boucher said, referring to results on Friday that showed the bank last year posted its first annual profit since the financial crisis.

"A very important reason why Bank of Ireland is where it is today was we had to admit we made mistakes. The fact that other people made worse mistakes than us, not just in Ireland but elsewhere too, didn't mean we didn't make our own mistakes."

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(Editing by Pravin Char)