Results 27,561-27,580 of 35,894 for speaker:Pearse Doherty
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Collapse of Setanta Insurance: Central Bank and Department of Finance (9 Jul 2014)
Pearse Doherty: The Deputy should ask a question.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Collapse of Setanta Insurance: Central Bank and Department of Finance (9 Jul 2014)
Pearse Doherty: I will be finished before that.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Collapse of Setanta Insurance: Central Bank and Department of Finance (9 Jul 2014)
Pearse Doherty: Deputy Boyd Barrett is finished.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Collapse of Setanta Insurance: Central Bank and Department of Finance (9 Jul 2014)
Pearse Doherty: I will ask a couple of quick questions as there is a vote in the Dáil. Listening to Mr. Sheridan and in view of the actions of the Central Bank on provisioning, is it the case that if the company was regulated in Ireland, as a bare minimum, the problem in terms of blanket provisioning would have been identified earlier?
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Collapse of Setanta Insurance: Central Bank and Department of Finance (9 Jul 2014)
Pearse Doherty: While the Central Bank does not engage in prudential supervision, it has used whatever power it had to go in and find out what was under the hood of the company, which really sparked the alarms in terms of Malta, even though it knew for two years that the company was below its additional buffer. Is that fair to say?
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Collapse of Setanta Insurance: Central Bank and Department of Finance (9 Jul 2014)
Pearse Doherty: Deputy Higgins mentioned the following here. Was the Central Bank at any time concerned about a conflict of interest between the company and the manner in which it was established, and the fact that brokers were selling their insurance products? A number of shareholders in the company are either directors or senior employees and a number of directors are in brokers and groups that provide...
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Collapse of Setanta Insurance: Central Bank and Department of Finance (9 Jul 2014)
Pearse Doherty: Is it acceptable for an insurance company to be owned by the directors of broker companies?
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Collapse of Setanta Insurance: Central Bank and Department of Finance (9 Jul 2014)
Pearse Doherty: I suggest that it is something the Central Bank looks into. My last question is for both the Department and the Central Bank. This is about the mess we are in. It is a mess one way or another. We have a company that went into liquidation and do not know when payments will be processed. We do not know if we can access MIBI to process some of the payments. We do not know how many...
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Collapse of Setanta Insurance: Central Bank and Department of Finance (9 Jul 2014)
Pearse Doherty: The Department was only informed of the problems within this company in late January. Thereafter, it basically hung 75,000 Irish customers of Setanta Insurance out to dry. I am not sure whether there were other options available but did the Department consider any? The customers in question paid their premiums to the company, which was regulated by the EU, and they would have expected to...
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Collapse of Setanta Insurance: Central Bank and Department of Finance (9 Jul 2014)
Pearse Doherty: Was the possibility of taking the company into State control examined? For example, throughout the entire process the company was seeking buyers. In view of the fact that the company did not have any customers outside Ireland, the Department applied a different rule in respect of it than was the case with Quinn Insurance. Did the Department consider following that example and ensuring that...
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Collapse of Setanta Insurance: Central Bank and Department of Finance (9 Jul 2014)
Pearse Doherty: So the Department did not consider any other solution.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Collapse of Setanta Insurance: Central Bank and Department of Finance (9 Jul 2014)
Pearse Doherty: That is fair enough.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Collapse of Setanta Insurance: Central Bank and Department of Finance (9 Jul 2014)
Pearse Doherty: If MIBI states that it will not process third-party claims and that these can be processed by the insurance compensation fund, will there be a hierarchy of payments or will all payments be processed at the same time?
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Collapse of Setanta Insurance: Central Bank and Department of Finance (9 Jul 2014)
Pearse Doherty: If MIBI states that it is not paying out on third-party claims, then there is no sequence wherein all first-party claims have to be processed by the insurance compensation fund before third-party ones.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Collapse of Setanta Insurance: Central Bank and Department of Finance (9 Jul 2014)
Pearse Doherty: The Maltese have an additional buffer of 0.5%. What is the position with the Central Bank in this regard?
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Collapse of Setanta Insurance: Central Bank and Department of Finance (9 Jul 2014)
Pearse Doherty: So it is fair to state that the Irish directors of this Irish company established it in Malta because if they had set it up here, they would have been obliged to set aside a buffer which is three times greater than that which is required by the Maltese authorities.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Collapse of Setanta Insurance: Central Bank and Department of Finance (9 Jul 2014)
Pearse Doherty: Malta insists on an additional buffer of 0.5 times the required margin of solvency. Is this the same as that required by the Irish Central Bank?
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Collapse of Setanta Insurance: Central Bank and Department of Finance (9 Jul 2014)
Pearse Doherty: When discussions took place with the Maltese authorities in September, did they indicate that Setanta Insurance had been failing to meet the buffer requirements since 2011?
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Collapse of Setanta Insurance: Central Bank and Department of Finance (9 Jul 2014)
Pearse Doherty: I wish to pose a final question. I am of the view that the Central Bank was extremely lax in respect of this matter. Mr. Sheridan can bat for his own side in a moment in respect of that assertion on my part. It seems that the only flag that was raised for consumers came in the form of the widely-circulated press release. On numerous occasions we asked the Minister what he was doing to...
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Collapse of Setanta Insurance: Central Bank and Department of Finance (9 Jul 2014)
Pearse Doherty: However, the brokers, who are regulated by the Central Bank, still renewed policies.