Dr. Elaine Byrne:

About two weeks ago. I think that referred to Professor Bill Black's comments, as well as other comments that have been made before the inquiry, that it is not just about looking at the institutions but at the individuals within those institutions. In that article I made reference to legislation and to Judge Rakoff's comments. He is a pretty amazing individual when it comes to economic crime and his comments about wilful neglect. Just because an individual does not know, one also should ask, "Well, should they have known?" There is a responsibility therein. One cannot just hide behind this veil of "I didn't know." The question then arises that one should have known and there is liability therein.

The other piece in that article I referred to was in relation to Europe and penalties that the UK is also trying to bring in on not just fining banks, but fining individual bankers. There has been research done that since 2008 extraordinary fines have been imposed on banking institutions around the world, but behaviour has not changed.

The governor of the Bank of England, who also happens to be an Irish passport holder, has argued very vehemently, "What has changed?" We have had an economic collapse. We have had institutions that have collapsed. We have had massive consequences to individual citizens, but the behaviour of some of these banks has not changed because it is almost like banks are using fines as a line within their accounts. There is an inevitability about it, "We're going to get fined and, sure, that's part of life." So instead of focusing just on the institutions one would also focus on the individuals.