Mr. Gary Tobin:

The Deputy raised a lot of interesting issues. She asked an interesting question about banking culture. It is a strange phrase, in a way. I am reminded of what the head of the International Monetary Fund, Ms Christine Lagarde, said recently to the effect that those working in the financial sector must be as serious about values as they are about valuations, and just as passionate about culture as they are about capital. A lot of this derives from the fact that an unacceptable culture operated during the financial crisis. In 2011, the Commission of Investigation into the Banking Sector in Ireland stated that cultural failings within the banking sector were a significant contributory factor to the financial crisis.

Mr. David Needle, an academic at King's College London, has focused on banking culture. He says banking culture represents the collective values, beliefs and principles of its members and is a product of management style and the organisation's vision, norms, environment and habits. The best definition of culture which I have come across is one that describes it as what people do when nobody is watching. We need to be mindful of what bank employees are doing when, for whatever reason, the regulator is not watching.