Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 5 February 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Context Phase

Mr. Mario Nava:

What I said, to be precise, was that the law of Ireland met the minimum standards. Does that beg the question as to whether the standards were too low? I think you have had a very explicit reply by the global institutions and the Commission to that question, given the fact that those standards have now been multiplied by three. In the space of a few years, the minimum standards were multiplied by three and on top of the minimum standards we now have other buffers, like the counter-cyclical buffers which we spoke about earlier. We also have another buffer which is called the capital conservation buffer which makes it impossible for the banks to distribute dividends unless they are comfortably above the minimum and there are also systemic risk buffers which protect them. Rather than speculating about whether the standards were too high or too low, I would say that the pragmatic reply is very clear. We have had an explicit reply that we needed higher standards.

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