Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 4 October 2018

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

Behaviour and Culture of the Irish Retail Banks Report: Central Bank of Ireland

9:30 am

Ms Derville Rowland:

Some 122 enforcement cases have concluded. Our policy is and always has been to make outcomes public where possible. The importance of transparency is a key driver in our approach. In some cases, we cannot give out information. Professional secrecy and European confidentiality regimes apply to us as they do to central banks all in European countries such that we cannot put certain information into the public domain or are unable to comment on aspects of disputes, some of which may be in the public domain. Mr. Sibley may address this issue momentarily. Where it is possible to make enforcement outcomes or other details public, it is very important to us that we do so because the more aware the public is of the outcomes of cases, the more confidence it will have in the Central Bank. We have released a significant amount of detail about what happened, the resultant penalties and what drives the penalties and the behaviour that is described. We do not just detail the outcomes. We also address the story preceding the outcome because we know that is an investment in building trust and informing the public of the approaches we take. When we cannot release information regarding a particular case, we try to release aggregate information. It is a key part of how we approach regulation because we acknowledge that it is very important that our approach is understood and trusted as much as possible. We recognise that is not particularly easy for aspects of our role or actions to be understood, but we are driven by our aim to deliver on our mandate in the public interest, which is core to how we do our work and what we regard as important and serious.

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