Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 15 December 2020

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

Banking Issues in Ireland: Central Bank

Mr. Ed Sibley:

The change in the banking landscape is primarily focused on international activity and investment banking-type activity rather than on retail banking or Irish customers. Brexit has necessitated that the banks operating out of the UK and providing services into the EU across a range of areas, be that corporate lending, investment banking, transaction services and so on, need to locate in EU countries. As a result, here was a movement of part of the banking services from London to Dublin, Frankfurt, Paris and Amsterdam.

On the second aspect of the Deputy's question, we seek to ensure that the hearts and minds of the organisation are operating out of Dublin. If they are authorised here, they need to have boards, strong management capability and effective risk management here. We recognise that they are interconnected. They are typically part of wider international groups so there is a reliance on other parts of those groups for the provision of services such as, for example, those relating to IT. There has been a transition process for capability to move from London to other parts of the EU. Some of that transition has been slowed by the pandemic but we continue to expect that there will be hearts and minds here. I would add that we operate very much as part of the Single Supervisory Mechanism. We are party to the European approach to banking supervision and there is a strong degree of consistency regarding how we expect entities to operate. We expect firms to operate in Dublin as they would be expected to operate in other parts of the eurozone.

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