Professor Gregory Connor:

Obviously they did not exercise their powers. I think part of the problem was the success of the IFSC turned, in particular, the financial regulatory authority into a booster for light regulation. That fed into this very light-touch approach of the Financial Regulator. It was way overboard relative to competitors, except Iceland, and was the second worst prudential performance in the world. It was partly induced by the flawed mandate, which has now been split. You should not have your financial regulator simultaneously flying around the world telling people "Bring your financial services to Ireland and we will adopt a very light-touch approach". That contributed to what was a very bad performance.