Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

For the record, that is not my sole conclusion. I believe it is the primary reason for the increases but there are other reasons which have also been articulated. I am not asking the Minister of State to reach a conclusion now. I am asking him, as the chairman of the working group, to identify why the Central Bank believed that imprudent pricing and underwriting approaches across most business lines resulted in the companies' business plans becoming less resilient to downside risks and what it did, if anything, to address this at that time. It is crucially important that we know the answers to these questions. The Central Bank might say that it did not have the power to act and if did not, then we need to make sure to give it that power. On the other hand, the bank may have been asleep at the wheel. We need to know why the Central Bank believed this was happening. The Central Bank is the regulator for these companies and we are under the impression that it would deal with issues such as this because that is its job.