Professor Philip Lane:

I apologise but I will have to revert to the Deputy on that matter because I am not familiar with that exchange with the Ombudsman. I agree with him that there is no ranking or contest between our financial stability mandate and our consumer protection mandate. They are both mandates and there is no trade-off between them. The fact that in 2010, there was a major crisis taking place is in no way a reason to pay insufficient attention to consumer protection. There is no conflict between the two areas. The Central Bank has a separate consumer protection directorate. Regardless of what was going on in terms of the wider stability of the system, consumer protection has always been a core mandate of the Central Bank and one which is not ranked as inferior to its other mandates.