Professor Philip Lane:

Let me emphasise that, within the culture report, while the recommendation on the accountability regime turns to the Oireachtas regarding additional legal powers, there is much else there with regard to other elements. It is a step forward in terms of our expectations of the banks and how we engage with the banks. I emphasise that all of the banks have remediation programmes issued to them. We have learned through this culture report of particular issues in particular banks and part of our normal supervisory work is to follow through on that. We cannot discuss those bank-by-bank individual issues here. We have, therefore, focused on and highlighted this legal change. The committee will have seen various officials come before it or before other fora to say, "Mistakes were made", in the passive voice, as if they were unaware of it and so on. The whole point here is to flip the burden of expectation. Under this new accountability framework, just as we are seeing now in the UK, a senior executive cannot say, "I did not see that email", or, "I was not involved in that decision." If a person is responsible for building the organisational culture, that is a heavy responsibility and it means that even if the person is not directly involved in some key decisions, he or she can still be held to account. There is the difficulty of establishing the chain of causation under the current legislation versus that-----