Mr. Gerry Cross:

One of the great merits of the Central Bank is that we are an integrated regulator. We cover the full span of different sectors. That gives us an ability in terms of how we see the full picture and our expertise, but also to cross-fertilise. We see that in some of our conversations with firms which might be bringing activities to Ireland which may be relatively new to us. However, in terms of how they are constructed, we can pull expertise from different parts of our organisation and quite quickly put in place a very clear and effective way of approaching that.

As Ireland already has a very significant international financial services sector which covers a large range of activities, we are starting from a good position. Beyond that, in the past five years the resourcing base within the Financial Regulator part of the Central Bank has been enhanced materially. We have seen growth and are in a process where we are already responding to events, for example, the development of the SSN in response to our revised approach to supervision. We have been in a phase of enhancement which has been positioned to get to grips with this. We use a risk base and a reprioritising approach in order that we can move resources coherently and effectively around the organisation. We have acted in a very integrated way. Across the sectors we have pooled our resources and thinking such that we are in good shape to have the discussions and bring expertise to bear. The Governor has said we will increase resources, as necessary. At the end of last year we made plans to provide additional resources for Brexit-specific things that we could identify, encompassing 28 additional resources for authorisation activities, and fo which we committed to recruiting. We also made contingency plans and are in the process of reviewing and potentially further enhancing the resources we need. The various parts are coming together.