Ms Sharon Donnery:

I completely agree with the Cathaoirleach about the matter being of public concern. I totally accept the issue of the size and scale of the numbers that are being discussed and why they are a matter of public concern. The Central Bank spends so much time on the regulation and supervision of all of these firms because we totally accept that.

Going back to the €1.1 billion figure, there was engagement with Quinn Insurance at that time and we will get the numbers that have been requested. Two material things happened that the Central Bank did not expect or was not aware of. The first was that the bank had been informed that there would be an injection of €35 million into Quinn Insurance to help stabilise it. However, that did not happen. Then there were the unexpected guarantees which the Central Bank had no sight of and which in the end, in terms of the overall stability of the firm, raised the most material concern. That is not to detract from the fact that there had been ongoing concerns for quite some period before.

The other calls on the ICF which the Cathaoirleach mentioned are Lemma Insurance, Setanta Insurance, Gable Insurance and Enterprise Insurance. It is important to emphasise that these firms operated in Ireland on a European basis. They were operating here on a freedom-of-service and freedom-of-establishment basis, which is provided for in European legislation for firms to operate on a cross-border basis. This means that supervision and oversight of those firms is the responsibility of the home jurisdiction. The firms in question were set up in Gibraltar, Malta and Liechtenstein. The Central Bank had responsibility for these firms regarding conduct of business and how they were interacting with their customers but it did not have oversight or review of their financial positions.