Professor Patrick Honohan:

Resolution legislation is a good example. People were making efforts. Particularly, one will hear presumably from representatives from the Department of Finance. There was a lot of thought given to resolution legislation because in 2007 when Northern Rock trouble arose, the British authorities realised that they had not brought their legislation up to date and had not been doing things that developing countries are doing, putting in ways of dealing with insolvent banks through a special liquidation procedure and a special resolution allocation. They started to work on that legislation, so why did we not do it? Well, the Department of Finance in consultation with the Central Bank said, "Yes, let's do this, we should have," and the Central Bank said to the Department of Finance, "you should work on this."

The Attorney General said that it was all very well for the British as they do not have a constitution, but as we have a Constitution protecting private property the Attorney General did not think we could get the same legislation through here. Therefore, all of these things were considered but they were not brought to an adequate conclusion.