Mr. Maurice Crowley:

It is a tough one. Some of my comments may relate to how I answered Deputy Michael McGrath's points. It is not just down to the banking culture board, to be fair. It will help in the setting of standards and in highlighting the issues that exist from a sectoral perspective. It comes back to what happens within each individual bank. I disagree with the notion that a bank's sole objective is to earn profits and maximise revenues. Having said that, I do not dispute there is an ongoing need for a change in culture to having a more customer-centric culture. That is why I drew a distinction in my response to the previous Senator between the individual accountability framework, which clearly and genuinely has a role to play in driving out and taking a greater level of responsibility regarding the customer and treating the customer fairly, and changing the culture, which is slightly different because the framework is a framework but we also want a mindset and a set of behaviours that thinks in favour of the customer. The banking culture board has an important role to play in that. Regulation to date is playing a role in that under the Central Bank's consumer protection codes. It has strict standards now on the introduction of new products, which is called product oversight and governance, so regulation has a role to play, but in the middle there is that kind of leadership and drive to change people's behaviour. Some of that, and it was there when I worked in one of the institutions, is down to how one reviews people's performance. If one is solely reviewing people's performance on the number of widgets they sell or the profit they make, one is not going to change the culture. Certainly in the institution in which I worked at the time, one's qualitative behaviour was as important as one's quantitative behaviour. There will have to be much more focus and emphasis on that to balance the quantitative emphasis at the end of the day.