Professor Patrick Honohan:

Well, I don't know what ... legislation is the responsibility of the Government. The drafting of financial legislation is largely the responsibility of the Department of Finance but in the case, for example, of bankruptcy legislation it's the responsibility of the Department of justice, and we've been very much involved in ... so, the role of the Central Bank is in advising, in suggesting legislative changes that seem to be needed to deliver our mandate, and in helping on matters which might not be in our mandate, but for which we have expertise. For example, in bankruptcy legislation, we were asked ... bankruptcy legislation in considered, in many financial circles, to be quite aggressive and anti-creditor legislation. And, of course, they wanted to know is the Central Bank on board for that. And we said "Yes, we're on board for that, even though it is in that direction." And then so that way of technical advice. The Attorney General and parliamentary draftsmen of course had ... they were advisors to the Government on making sure the legislation hangs together, makes sense, is coherent with other pieces of legislation, is constitutional and so on and so forth. But I'm not an expert on that.

So the role of the Central Bank is to advocate for some legislation and to help in the technicalities. A lot of legislation is transposition of European directives. Directives set out what needs to be achieved, but the Irish legal system is a particular, and the legislation has to be designed coherent with the rest of Irish legislation. So, we would have experts, sometimes we second them, sometimes they just work with committees to try to make sure that that legislation gets transposed promptly and effectively.