Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Carrigan for helping us get the structure clear in our heads. To what extent is the rule book written? Will it be possible for us to see the rule book which will then be applied by the supervisory mechanism? Will the rule book be in a fairly clearly understandable form?

We are talking in terms of architecture and engineering of the supervisory structure, but then of course policy comes into play. One could have concerns, especially given my perception of the attitude of the ECB. I have made this point a number of times. At the beginning of 2008 the ECB issued a guideline to States and to Central Banks in which it states that if states needed to rescue banks, if possible they should avoid nationalisation but even if they nationalise them they should avoid diverting the goals of the bank from profit maximisation to other social goals. That is its directive because it believes that to be in the best interests of banking, but as some of the discussions we have had earlier today and much of the discussion between the Parliament and banks at present, we might have a very different view of that. We might think it would be a good thing if the banks took social and macro-economic goals more into account when deciding their policies. To put some of this into context, it would be useful for us to know what the rules are, how far-reaching they are.

Some of them are about the level of capitalisation, possibly risk management and so on, but how far reaching are they and will more rules be developed and, if so, will we see them in a clearly understandable form in order that we know what rules are being applied to the banks and then we can decide whether they are a good idea?