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

Professor Ed Kane attended the committee last week. He gave a number of recommendations to this committee for the future, very much as Professor Black indicated in his opening statement, on how to avoid this type of crisis in the future and the necessary levels of accountability at senior banker level. I shall outline one of the figures he gave us. He said that the fines to date of US and European banks since 2008 are worth €180 billion. These are just fines and not prosecutions, bailouts or anything else. That sum will be paid in fines and is many multiples of the cost of the Irish guarantee. How should we deal with this matter into the future? Do we continue to fine institutions? Do we need to increase the tariff or penalty imposed on bankers along the lines of what was indicated in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act?