Professor Gregory Connor:

The IFSC has been a success in many ways but it does specialise in very light regulation. German taxpayers probably have bigger losses than Irish taxpayers arising from the light regulation of the broader Irish financial sector through their losses in the IFSC. It specialises in regulatory arbitrage and tax-type situations that are perhaps pushing the limits. That has worked and is partly what offshore centres do, but it probably has been done to excesses in some cases in the IFSC. Furthermore, that tendency or philosophy washed back to the domestic economy. The regulation of financial markets in domestic Ireland was hobbled by the very light-touch approach that was one of the founding principles of the IFSC.