Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 13 June 2013

Public Accounts Committee

Special Report No. 72 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: Financial Regulator (Resumed)

2:20 pm

Mr. Matthew Elderfield:

I would not dismiss the first two entirely, because a timing question arises. At present, there is a lot of capital in the banks to absorb losses for the foreseeable future. One may identify in the stress test a hypothetical loss in the future. Consequently, there is a question as to how fast one might wish to deal with that. One might decide one should have a plan to get there in stages between now and the end of Basel III. The circumstances may well be that a private investor decides this is a reasonable plan in which it will take part. Consequently, I would not rule that out as an option. One should think very carefully about how fast one wishes to address these things until one knows what will be the European policy framework. This probably is a good reason to align our stress tests with the European stress tests, in order to ascertain what the European framework will be for direct recapitalisation.

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