Professor Patrick Honohan:

The allocation of resources. One of the things is a very striking figure here in my report telling one how many staff were devoted to knowing about the particular banks. There were three people on the Bank of Ireland team and, if I am not mistaken, they worked also on Anglo Irish Bank. Three people, that is sort of ridiculous for two banks which caused so many problems. Obviously we organise ourselves a bit differently now. We have five to ten times the number of people on this direct supervision of banks. It was because the approach was to say that a well-governed bank is going to be alright because those guys have the incentive to make it run okay. That is not true. Regulation is not just about making sure that the banks are being run in accordance with what the shareholders will want. The shareholders' interests and the State's interests are different.