Mr. Oliver Gilvarry:

The Central Bank can come in on this. With the current framework there is a board of supervisors, with a chair who is a permanent member of staff and a non-voting member. There are also very senior people from the relevant competent authorities sitting on it, and there are 28 competent authorities. Decisions would be made in different ways. Some would be on a simple majority and some would be with qualified majority voting.

What has been proposed by the Commission is that we would have an executive board. To take a step back, we have a management board structure within the ESAs made up of the chair of the relevant ESA and a certain number of members from the board of supervisors elected. I cannot remember the exact number. The European Commission representative would sit on that as well as a non-voting member. That really deals with more administrative issues. The Commission is proposing an executive board, which in the case of the European Banking Authority and EIOPA, the insurance authority, would be made up of three permanent members, with the chair of the relevant ESA and the European Commission delegate as an observer. It will make certain decisions, whether it relates to binding mediation or breach of Union law, for example. The way it is phrased, it looks as if the papers are being prepared for the board of supervisors. It would be another group where we have no national competent authorities present with any views being put forward. In some cases it makes decisions without national competent authorities having a say and prepares papers put forward to the board of supervisors.

Our response in the consultation paper to this in April and may this year was that we saw a need for potentially some permanent members to be on the board of supervisors to give a pan-European view. This is so a domestic or parochial view could be broken. We always said there needed to be a majority of supervisors on the board because they are on the ground making decisions and engaging with firms. They will also be implementing the rules. We feel it is important they have a strong say. As I said, we saw a view for a more pan-European focus but the national competent authorities should remain in the majority. This executive board up-ends that.