Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 18 December 2014

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Context Phase

2:00 am

Mr. Rob Wright:

I think I would have, but I cannot say for sure that I would have, if I had come through the system and gone through the concerns I expressed earlier about the leak of advice and the problems. However, if I were just dropped in, for a moment, from Canada, absolutely. At that point, Ireland had a major economic problem and then a crisis on the financial sector. These were challenging times in Canada and I had a full squad of outstanding, world-class economists with great integrity - strong integrity I knew about - on the financial regulatory side, and it was still challenging. It would have been extraordinarily challenging for the senior advisers in Ireland at that time. The pressures and the demands on them would have been extraordinary.