Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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A basic of any business model is that a company has to be able to cover its liabilities. When a company starts having more liabilities than it has the potential to fulfil and does not have the assets or sureties to do so, surely that is not just a red flag, that is red lights flashing all over the place. At that point, surely the Central Bank should do something. We are not just talking about Quinn Insurance here. In the briefing notes I see the figures for all of these other companies that have gone into liquidation since. The ICF, that is, the public, has had to come up with the money for these. In my naivety, up to very recently, I would have seen the Central Bank as having substantial powers which I still believe it does. I also thought it had very strong oversight and would be very diligent about these matters, particularly after the collapse of Quinn Insurance. The collapse of PMPA rankled with the public and customers. That was certainly a sore point with people in the 1980s and here we are now in the 2020s, some 40 years later, with it still happening. I understand that companies fail. That is the way business works. Some businesses fail. We had this with Anglo Irish Bank bank and all that went on there with people getting by on money fairy kind of money. However, the insurance industry can be monitored. These companies will have annual financial statements and surely it is the job of the Central Bank to make sure the reserves and sureties are there to meet any potential liabilities that arise. Looking at these figures, it is clear to me that this did not happen. The Central Bank has failed to do its job properly.