Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Mr. Moran referred to projections for how the banking sector in Ireland will look in 2020. ACC Bank, Danske Bank and Bank of Scotland have either moved out of the Irish market or are winding down their operations here. We are facing a situation, in other words, where we will have very few banks and very little competition. I do not see that issue being fully addressed in the documents to which Mr. Moran referred. It seems clear to me that the greatest problem in the banking sector in Ireland in the years to come will be the fact there are so few banks in the market.

In regard to the European stress tests that will take place later in the year, we have spoken about the high dependency of EU economies on the banking sector when considered relative to GDP. We are now hearing that some of the larger banks are working to exclude some of their assets from these stress tests. In such a scenario, how valid will the tests really be? Is there a situation where the EU does not want full stress tests because if the result of those tests are poor, that could have another negative impact on the EU economy?