Members of the board of Allied Irish Banks were satisfied to get rid of Mr Haughey's "troublesome account", the Moriarty tribunal has heard.
A former general manager of an AIB subsidiary, Allied Irish Finance Ltd, Mr Charles Grayston, said his recollection of the settlement offer was that it was brought to the board for either consideration or ratification and he did not think the details of the settlement were provided.
Mr Grayston said he formed the impression that "the board felt it was in the best interests of the bank to accept this offer".
Counsel for the tribunal, Mr Jerry Healy SC, said it appeared that one board member wanted to know a little more about it, but could not get an answer.
Mr Grayston confirmed this.
Did this suggest that the executives were not totally confident of how commercial the settlement was, asked Mr Healy.
"I wouldn't agree with you there. I think they were quite satisfied to get rid of this troublesome account," said Mr Grayston.
Mr Healy asked Mr Grayston whether he was surprised that the then AIB chairman, Mr Niall Crowley, had been personally involved in negotiating with a customer of the bank.
"Not in the circumstances of this particular customer, it didn't surprise me," said Mr Grayston.
Asked whether the board had been disarmed, by virtue of the fact that the Taoiseach was involved, from prying into the details, Mr Grayston said it was possible they might have had some reservations about it.
Mr Joe Carr (77) confirmed he had been a director of the AIB Munster & Leinster branch from 1967, a member of the Dublin local board from 1970 and joined the AIB's main board from 1984.
Mr Carr confirmed that a hand-written note obtained by the tribunal was written by Mr Richard Barrow after a telephone call he had with the late Mr Jim Denvir, the area general manager at AIB.
The note indicated that as a director of Friends Provident, Mr Carr had made inquiries to that company as to whether it would be interested in "sale and leaseback transactions of land".
This related to a proposal which had been discussed regarding Mr Haughey's debt with AIB, confirmed Mr Carr.
Mr Carr said in his statement to the tribunal that normally Friends Provident would be potentially interested in sale and lease-back transactions.