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

Thank you for your opening statement, Mr. Neary, and just to remind the ... so that we get the structure of today's proceedings under way, this morning's session will be focusing on the period of Mr. Neary's tenure up to October 2007, while the afternoon session will focus on developments in the period of November 2007 to January 2009, which we will be dealing with this afternoon with you Mr. Neary. Mr. Neary, can I maybe just get two matters out of the way before we commence the full line of questioning? In Mr. Hurley's evidence to the inquiry last week on 21 May 2, Mr. Hurley said "the Financial Regulator was established with its own responsibility and its own independence", "the Financial Regulator was accountable to its own board, it was not accountable to the Governor of the Central Bank". Can I ask you is this accurate, were you independent and were you accountable to the Governor or the board or the Central Bank or anyone else?