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:

I wish to make an important point. Taking the point that a meeting has been agreed with Mr. Sugarman and the Chairman, which is very good, we are now in 2017. These events date back to, I believe, 2007 and that time. Since then, in this jurisdiction, significant whistleblowing legislation has been passed and brought into force. There has been more than one type. It is a really important signal of confidence in the Central Bank and its current whistleblowing and listening obligations. As Mr. Sibley has already stated, we take those obligations extremely seriously. We have a whistleblowing desk. We take the information in. Employment law protections are now built into the system in this jurisdiction which I do not believe were there before, so the legislative framework is different. We have a dedicated whistleblowing function so that when information comes into the Central Bank it is sent immediately to the line supervisors, as they are the experts with regard to the institutions that they supervise, so that they can assess that information and action is taken. That is an important point to make in terms of the structure of the system now and the formulation of whistleblowing legislation and how it has been brought in as an important part of the infrastructure in this jurisdiction. It is not, I believe, just in financial services, but right across the board, and it is right that it is. It is right that I am clear about our support for that and the importance we place on it.

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