Professor Patrick Honohan:

It is hard to say what the Central Bank wanted in those days, but there was a minority report in the McDowell report. If memory serves me, it was signed by the assistant secretary of the Department of Finance and the director general or perhaps the deputy director general of the Central Bank. They wanted something slightly different and they got part of their way. They wanted something like what is in place now under the 2010 legislation. In other words, bank supervision is a department of the Central Bank and fully integrated within it. They did not want a separate entity. At the time the Government and the Oireachtas decided not to create a completely separate identity and created this strange hybrid animal. The Central Bank got part of the way towards what it wanted.