Ms Gráinne McEvoy:

I would say "No". Right across the breadth of the Central Bank, we protect the interests of consumers. As the Deputy will be aware, our mandate is quite broad. If we think about our role in terms of financial stability and the proper and effective functioning of the wider economy, any regime we have in place is ultimately to ensure the interests of consumers are protected by a well-functioning market and a well-functioning economy. If you look to our prudential mandate, we ensure firms meet very high standards, are adequately resourced in terms of capital and are solvent. That is to ensure they are in a position, for example, if I think of insurance firms, to pay out on policies or, if you are engaging in dealing with a bank, that your deposits are safe.

If you look to our consumer protection mandate, our core objective is to ensure firms act at all times in the best interests of consumers and treat their consumers fairly. This is to ensure the regime we impose supervises these firms to ensure they do so and there are adequate and robust consumer protections in place in terms of our regulations and guidelines.

That, in turn, leads me to our role in terms of policy-setting. We actively engage at a European level to enhance and support strong measures for the protections of consumers. Similarly, at a domestic level, we will engage with the committee and other colleagues to ensure the domestic regime supports the protection of consumers and meets that desired objective.

Finally, the fifth component of our mandate extends to enforcement action. If we find that firms operating in Ireland, or indeed on a cross-Border basis, are not acting in the consumers' best interests, and we have many cases where we have taken strong decisions in enforcement using our administrative sanction powers where we believe firms were not acting fairly or were not treating their customers fairly, right across the breadth of the Central Bank's mandate we seek to ensure the best interests of consumers are protected. Therefore, I do not see there to be a conflict.