Ms Derville Rowland:

The Central Bank has a public contacts unit, whose role is to communicate with the public. That has to be understood. We are very happy to take contact from people and to answer them as best we are permitted. I fully appreciate the perception that the Central Bank is not sharing the information. The Central Bank operates under a strict rule of confidentiality as the regulator of the regulated firms; that is a fact. I can understand how frustrating that is. Where we can be transparent, it is really important to be transparent. We have been quite different in this case and these cases from every other case. The Senator and her colleagues will normally hear responses from the Central Bank to the effect that it cannot say or that it is a live supervisory matter. That is the norm. To the most we are able to do so, we have made a big effort. It may not feel like it is enough. We have pushed ourselves to be as transparent as we can because we recognise the importance of and interest in this by publishing reports and updates. We have done this in two ways, both through live supervisory work, which puts the legal decisions and the approaches under scrutiny, which is not always the best thing to do, together with trying to be open about the enforcement cases as well.