Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Cathaoirleach and the Governor who I welcome to the committee. This is the Governor's first opportunity to come before the committee and I welcome it. I know we have had an opportunity to meet prior, so I welcome that also. I look forward to the engagement as we had with the Governor's predecessors, some of what may be robust and helpful and from the Governor's point of view may be not too helpful. That is what it is all about.

Can I ask the Governor to pick up on the last point that he made in terms of the further research that he is going to do in relation to the investment funds, and particularly property investment funds. I did engage with the Governor's predecessor on this issue. I wrote to him at the time outlining my concerns in terms of the highly-leveraged nature of some of these funds and if they were to drop in the market the spillover effects that that would have. The Central Bank on the back of that and some of its own concerns carried out an assessment which I think was published about this time last year and was very thorough. It did identify some of the risks if there was a shock such as Brexit and that there could be spillover effects from these investment funds withdrawing and the impact in terms of property and commercial property in particular.

Given that work had been done and those risks had been identified, why is the Governor - and I welcome the fact - carrying out further evaluation and research in relation to this? Is the Governor more concerned now about these investment funds and property investment funds than he or the Central Bank was at that time? Is there something that has led to more concerns within the banks?