Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 10 June 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Ms Mary O'Dea:

Oh, sorry. Okay. So the ..., I think the legislation was very good. I think bringing everything back within one organisation had to be done because something had to be shown to revive confidence in the system. Something different had to happen. But I would also say that I don't think the structure, of itself, was actually a major causal issue because, I think, even in a new organisation, in a single organisation, you're still going to have two specialist areas - one looking at financial stability issues, one looking at micro-prudential issues. And if those two areas don't have absolute clarity of role and don't work together very well, then, I think, you can the same problem. So while I think changing the structure is a good idea, I think that that wasn't, of itself, the same problem. And if I may add one thing, because I wouldn't be true to my previous role as consumer director, if I didn't say that I thought it was also very important that the new structure retained the two pillars: one of setting out the enforceable codes, which I've talked about for consumers; and the other one of providing consumer information. And while consumer information has moved out of the Central Bank, that pillar stayed within the new consumer agency.