Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 10 June 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Ms Mary O'Dea:

Well, we were very concerned and the reference that you point out there is an accurate reflection of what happened at the meeting that we were very concerned that there would be any suggestion that we would not take the same level of intrusive regulation with the IFSC entities as we would with the domestic banks. And we thought that this would be very negative both as a matter of substance and also as a matter of reputation. So we did actually say that we don't want any perceptions whatsoever and drew the attention of the parties, the Government parties to that to say that they should be very careful how this was phrased because we didn't want to have that differentiation. And then in terms of the day-to-day dealings, the main focus of 2009 was very much on the domestic banks. The main focus was on the domestic banks. There were also discussions with other international regulators about banks who had a presence here. So there were discussions around that but the principal focus was on the domestic banks.