Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 26 February 2019

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach

Law Reform Commission Report on Regulatory Powers and Corporate Offences: Engagement

Mr. Raymond Byrne:

One of the issues that we emphasised was that we do not have a role in determining the policy of a regulator in respect of, for example, the licensing of a bank and whether that license should be revoked. That is included in the Central Bank legislation and, therefore, it is possible for the Central Bank to revoke a banker's licence, which is at the top of the pyramid of the enforcement sanctions, as it is described in the report. It is an option open to the Central Bank and we did not examine it because it was outside of our remit as it is the policy of the Central Bank.