Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

With members' agreement, I now bring the Joint Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis into public session. We commence this morning with public hearings with Professor Edward Kane of Boston College on banking and banking regulation. I welcome everyone to the sixth public hearing of the joint committee. We will hear from Professor Kane on banking and bank regulation. Professor Kane is very welcome before the committee this morning.

Professor Edward J. Kane is a professor of finance at Boston College and holds a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor Kane's specific research areas include financial crisis management, deposit insurance, causes and implications of financial change and the changing structure of financial services competition and regulation. Currently, he consults with the World Bank and is a senior fellow in the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's Centre for Financial Research. Previously, Professor Kane has consulted for the IMF, components of the Federal Reserve system and three foreign central banks. As well as authoring three books, he has published widely in professional journals and currently serves on six editorial boards. The expression "zombie bank" to describe a bank which is insolvent but is kept alive through government assistance, was first used by Professor Kane in an academic paper published in 1987.

Before we begin, I advise the witness that by virtue of section 17(2)(l) of the Defamation Act 2009, he is protected by absolute privilege in respect of his evidence to this committee. However, if he is directed by the committee to cease giving evidence on a particular matter and continues to so do, he will be entitled thereafter only to qualified privilege in respect of his evidence. He is directed that only evidence connected with the subject matter of these proceedings is to be given and - as he has been informed previously - witnesses are asked to refrain from discussing named individuals in this phase of the inquiry. Members are reminded of the long-standing ruling of the Chair to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses or an official either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.

I again welcome Professor Kane and invite him to make his opening remarks.