Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 10 June 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. Cyril Roux:

The main instrument is the CRR, so it's the CRD IV and CRR. These are ... list the powers of the supervisory authority, and the supervisory authority is the ECB. So, we have lots of instruments, and, if I can just take a minute, it's not as if, you know, you have supervision - and supervision is just about, you know, moral suasion and meetings with people - and then you have enforcement. A very ... the biggest power we ... we have, I think, is that we decide the capital requirement. So, it's not just a calculation. We do calculations but then it's judgment based. And when you decide, as we did here in Ireland, that the banks need 10.5% of ... of core tier 1, you force them ... or you force the State to recapitalise them. When you ask PTSB, through the comprehensive assessment, to reach 5.5% in a stress test and they're below that, you force them to raise hundreds of millions. So, that's not enforcement, that's supervisory powers. You put the bar where you think it should be and then that's, you know, that costs hundreds of millions or billions. It's a very important power.

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