Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 10 June 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. Cyril Roux:

It's really difficult for me to comment on, you know, what was done and not done well before I arrived. What I would say that, Europe has chosen a very detailed rule book approach. So if you compare the Basel III accord and the CRD IV, CRD IV is supposed to be the transcription of the Basel III accord, but it's way bigger, way more detailed. So that's the European approach, we want tonnes of rules. Now, you know, the more you write rules, the more you write loopholes into rules, so, you know you could very well ... you can very well have thousands of pages of rules, which we have, and still miss ... you know, miss the ... miss the trick. So what you need is the mindset not to check the boxes but to challenge, to be sufficiently skilled to have the right, the right people. And these right people they have to be, you know, accountants, and experienced supervisors and, and lawyers and ... quants and credit risk analysts, etc, people that know their stuff, and be able to challenge the banks.