Mr. Derek Moran:

Yes is the answer. This is a cross-Government issue in which we play our role. I return to the point made that, during the crisis, the Department was not modelling those very adverse outcomes. It is the opposite way here. When nobody conceived the possibility of Brexit happening, we said that we needed to look at it and make publicly available what the consequences of it might be. It is a lesson learnt, quite frankly. After the 2014 British general election, which against all expectations led to a majority Conservative Government, the one thing that was certain was that there would be a referendum on Brexit. The right thing to do at that stage was to do the analysis well in advance in order to give an insight into what the likely effect would be. We were the only people to do that. People did not want to talk about it.

One of the failings in the run-up to the crisis was known as the domestic standing group. It was supposed to be an advance crisis simulator on the financial side of things. It did not work. It was at too low a level, was not given priority and so on. During the crisis management period, we had what was called the principal swoop, which involved the head of the Department, the NTMA and the bank meeting on a regular basis to manage the agenda. Going forward, that is not really what we are about. We changed that into what we called a financial stability group, which can be found around the world. It is an interaction between the monetary authority, the institutions that work for the Government, the treasury and funding agency to share information, which we have done, but in a much more structured way, to have a much more structure addenda and to try to model those exact sort of crises and challenges that one cannot see, such as the cyber attacks that bring money transmission systems down and all that stuff. We had our first meeting in that format with defined terms of reference. The membership of it, unlike further down the organisation, involves those at the top in order to give it authority. In terms of learning from the crisis and being ready, I believe we have learnt.