Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 19 October 2017

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach

Engagement with the Central Bank of Ireland

9:30 am

Ms Derville Rowland:

The approach to enforcement is this and other jurisdictions such as the United Kingdom is not to have a zero tolerance approach. Not all breaches across the regulatory spectrum will end up as an enforcement case. One would not be able to bring that volume of cases. We have a strategy of targeted and reactive enforcement. Reactive enforcement occurs in the most serious cases and we make the space to give resources to bring them forward. The tracker loan issue is a very good example of that approach. We also have targeted enforcement where we predefine areas where we see that compliance levels are low and it is very important to bring them up. We take a targeted set of enforcement measures to improve them. Transaction reporting in the markets area was another example. During the years we have taken quite a number of prudential focused cases in different areas that were very important. To be clear, from the very beginning of the enforcement strategy, as stated in 2010 until now, there has not been a total zero tolerance threshold for every single breach across the spectrum of regulated areas. We may take one or two of a particular type where we see non-compliance in an area and may take more. There are other regulatory tools in the escalation pyramid that are also used as enforcement measures to complement it. That is the general approach. We also have supervisory warnings as an enforcement tool which are private between the entity and the regulator. As the breaches move up the threshold, the procedures become full enforcement.

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