Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 16 July 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. Paul Gallagher:

Well, I think that was ... well, no, I think it was really the political matter. The countries were very ... and you have seen one of the reasons it took 'til 2013 for the single supervisory mechanism was that countries were reluctant to pass over the supervision of their financial system to an EU body, the ECB. And secondly, with regard to the resolution, there was very serious political concern. So I think it was known but I'm not sure there was the willingness to address it and I think that there may have been a failure of imagination because I don't believe that people really envisaged the sort of situation that did in fact arise here and throughout Europe and the United States in September 2008.