Professor Patrick Honohan:

Okay. No, I think it's a very important question.

First of all, some things have definitely improved. The Central Bank does keep a watching eye on the work of the clearing house group but it does not participate in its discussions and we no longer have any responsibility, statutory responsibility for developing the financial sector, which was a goal. We also don't any longer have ... there was an industry panel, a panel of industry specialists, which had certain powers under the previous legislation to poke around in what the Central Bank was doing for as far as regulation was concerned and lobby in that. We don't have that; that was ruled out of the new legislation. The tax matters have nothing to do with the Central Bank. Now, certainly these non-bank areas are ... Ireland is one of the largest centres in Europe for funds. It is also a substantial centre for insurance. We have increased our efforts to supervise the ... Funds is supposed to be simple, but then, mortgage lending was also supposed to be simple. Simple because these funds, the investors are supposed to be sophisticated wholesale entities and there is no risk of them to the payment system or to the general run of things. So, in principle, funds could collapse and the Government wouldn't be entailed.

However, we have to make sure the funds are doing what they say they are doing and that they are set up in accordance with the various pieces of legislation, mainly European legislation on the funds, and we do have a supervisory effort there. It seems to me that the regulation there has become very, very complex, very demanding and we will be increasing our staffing again on that side.

On insurance, we have already identified a sector of insurance which had grown here in the 2000s, a sector which was ... or a product, a range of products under the general heading of variable annuities, which were very complex and rather risky products. We noticed that Ireland was becoming one of the centres for this and we didn't like that because it sounded as if there might be some reasons ... we wanted to make sure that we were regulating it adequately and we weren't just getting these businesses coming here because they were getting some, kind of, lighter run on it. So we scrutinised that very closely, we discovered the risks that are involved and we have imposed much higher capital requirements on the firms that were providing these products and we're satisfied that this is safe. I'll give you just an example from the numbers that I had there. In 2009, insurance supervision, we had 42 people and, in the house at present, we have 96.8 people on insurance. So we are not just regulating ... not just concentrating on the last war, we are looking to the next war and insurance and funds. Funds figures are more complicated because they are mixed up with some other stuff. We have increased there too and I anticipate a further increase as well in the years ahead.