Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

With the passage of time, the amount of capital that our banks are required to hold due to the impact of the global financial crisis will diminish. That will happen over time because the reference period will include less and less of the crisis and post-crisis years. All that being said, even though I am aware of the perspective and analysis regarding how much capital our banks hold and how it is different to that of their peers within the European Union, that capital was a great source of insurance to us all that when we had to deal with the closure of so many different parts of our economy, we could always be reasonably confident that the financial sector was strong enough to withstand that economic shock.

If one looks at the recent trends that have happened within our banking system, we are now seeing the loan books of our banks begin to grow again after the pandemic and some healthy indicators regarding the volume of loans and the interest rates at which those loans are being made available. I am confident that over time one will see our banks able to contribute more to a recovery that was on the way before the war hit us.