Results 16,001-16,020 of 16,537 for speaker:Brian Lenihan Jnr

Seanad: Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland Bill 2003: Committee Stage (22 Jun 2004)

Brian Lenihan Jnr: This amendment is based on a misunderstanding. The regulatory authority is structured as a constituent part of the bank and the consumer director is a member of the regulatory authority. Section 33C of the principal Act makes it clear that it is the regulatory authority which has the function of ensuring compliance by finance institutions with their obligations under financial services...

Seanad: Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland Bill 2003: Committee Stage (22 Jun 2004)

Brian Lenihan Jnr: Section 27B implements a recommendation of the review group on auditing, namely that the external auditors of a financial institution should provide an annual positive statement to the Central Bank on whether anything has come to their attention which gives rise to a legislative duty to report to the Central Bank. Subsection (2)(a) provides that within three months of the end of the financial...

Seanad: Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland Bill 2003: Committee Stage (22 Jun 2004)

Brian Lenihan Jnr: Section 27B implements a recommendation of the review group on auditing that the external auditors of a financial institution should provide an annual positive statement to the Central Bank on whether anything has come to their attention which gives rise to a legislative duty to report it to the Central Bank. That is the same as the commentary on the last amendment. Subsection (4) lists the...

Seanad: Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland Bill 2003: Committee Stage (22 Jun 2004)

Brian Lenihan Jnr: Section 27F implements a recommendation of the review group on auditing that audit papers should be available on request to the Central Bank, which is provided for. Under the provisions of section 27, the bank may require an auditor or an affiliate of the auditor to provide it with a copy of any record relating to work carried out for the service provider that is in the possession of the...

Seanad: Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland Bill 2003: Committee Stage (22 Jun 2004)

Brian Lenihan Jnr: These amendments will substitute the new procedure for appeals to go in the first instance to the appeals tribunal with the old system involving direct applications to the court. The amendments may have been put forward in view of an omission in the Bill, as published, which meant that the right of appeal in regard to the revocation of an intermediaries' authorisation was inadvertently...

Seanad: Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland Bill 2003: Committee Stage (22 Jun 2004)

Brian Lenihan Jnr: I gather the McDowell report recommended a revised form of appeal where a specialised appeals tribunal would be established to deal with appeals in this area. In this context, the Bill, as drafted, was flawed because it did not contain any appeals mechanism. I know there was a certain hankering for the old appeals system through the regular recourse to the court but the Minister decided to...

Seanad: Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland Bill 2003: Committee Stage (22 Jun 2004)

Brian Lenihan Jnr: This amendment would weaken the current requirement that where an insurance agency held by a broker is discontinued for any reason, such a fact should be publicised. This amendment would create a potential exclusion from this provision and that would be undesirable from a consumer protection perspective. It is not acceptable to the Minister.

Seanad: Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland Bill 2003: Committee Stage (22 Jun 2004)

Brian Lenihan Jnr: The effect of this amendment would be to exclude a major category of mortgage introducers from the new definition of "mortgage intermediary" on page 188 of the Bill. The Director of Consumer Affairs originally indicated that the practice of using mortgage introducers, namely, persons who, though not authorised as mortgage intermediaries in their own right, introduce clients to authorised...

Seanad: Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland Bill 2003: Committee Stage (22 Jun 2004)

Brian Lenihan Jnr: The Senator's amendment seeks to change the current requirement under section 116 of the Consumer Credit Act that a mortgage intermediary secure a new authorisation each year. Such a change is already provided for in item 3 on page 189 of the Bill which was inserted on Report Stage in the Dáil on the proposal of the Minister. The amendment inserts a new section 7(a) into section 116 which...

Seanad: Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland Bill 2003: Committee Stage (22 Jun 2004)

Brian Lenihan Jnr: The amendment relates to an issue that was debated in the course of the passage of last year's Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland Act. It is important to note that the board of the financial regulator is a public interest board. We are talking about the board of a regulator, not a board where one brings in representatives from different sectors. The board's...

Seanad: Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland Bill 2003: Committee Stage (22 Jun 2004)

Brian Lenihan Jnr: The effect of the amendment would be to set the maximum fine that the regulator can impose as either €5,000,000 or a sum equal to the amount involved in the financial impropriety. That is the substance of the proposal. The fine is a punitive fine, not a restitutionary fine. The fine prescribed in legislation is what the Oireachtas marks as the just punishment for a particular wrongdoing. In...

Seanad: Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland Bill 2003: Committee Stage (22 Jun 2004)

Brian Lenihan Jnr: I accept that Senator Cummins raises a very interesting and difficult question. However, it is not as simple or straightforward as the Senator understandably outlined. The amendment seeks to require the regulatory authority to publicly justify a decision not to investigate or to discontinue an investigation of an alleged contravention. It addresses a concern expressed also during the debate...

Seanad: Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland Bill 2003: Committee Stage (22 Jun 2004)

Brian Lenihan Jnr: It is not there at present but the purpose of this legislation is to produce it. That fits in with the Government's general policy in recent years which is to raise the standard of corporate behaviour in business generally, particularly in the case of financial institutions who are entrusted with other people's money. The progress report published last week by the authority confirms that is...

Seanad: Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland Bill 2003: Committee Stage (22 Jun 2004)

Brian Lenihan Jnr: The Senator will be glad to learn I may be able to help him on this amendment. The amendment does not take into account paragraph 57BB(d), for which I forgive him because the legislation is sequenced in a very difficult manner. The paragraph was inserted on Report Stage in the Dáil and is based on a similar amendment tabled by Deputy Richard Bruton. The new paragraph states that one of the...

Seanad: Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland Bill 2003: Committee Stage (22 Jun 2004)

Brian Lenihan Jnr: The idea of an ombudsman council arose from the public consultation process on the Bill. The existing voluntary ombudsman schemes both have such councils and there has been no objection to the principle of such a council. The council will play an important role in setting out detailed regulations governing the ombudsman scheme and appointing the ombudsman. The Minister's intention is that...

Seanad: Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland Bill 2003: Committee Stage (22 Jun 2004)

Brian Lenihan Jnr: As Senators are aware, it is Government policy to seek to have a minimum of 40% of State boards made up of members of each gender. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to achieve this objective given the pool of persons available to serve on particular boards, which varies between sectors. While I accept that criticism can be levelled at the Government in that in some sectors in which...

Seanad: Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland Bill 2003: Second Stage. (16 Jun 2004)

Brian Lenihan Jnr: This Bill is complementary to the Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland Act 2003 which, as Senators will be aware, was signed into law last year. That Act established the Irish Financial Services Regulatory Authority to oversee the activities of financial institutions, including their treatment of customers. This Bill provides for the establishment of a financial services...

Social Welfare Benefits. (1 Jun 2004)

Brian Lenihan Jnr: I reply on behalf of the Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Deputy Coughlan. The supplementary welfare allowance scheme, which is administered on behalf of the Department by the health boards, provides assistance to eligible people in the State whose means are insufficient to meet their basic needs. The supplementary welfare allowance scheme is subject to a means test and, accordingly,...

Social Welfare Benefits. (1 Jun 2004)

Brian Lenihan Jnr: I am not sure that I have a function in that because there are appeals procedures in place and if they furnish those materials by way of a fresh application, that may resolve the matter. Accordingly, the family have not established as of the time of the preparation of this reply that they have an entitlement to assistance under the terms of the supplementary welfare allowance scheme. The...

Written Answers — Inter-Country Adoptions: Inter-Country Adoptions (1 Jun 2004)

Brian Lenihan Jnr: During 2002 the Vietnamese authorities decided that, from the end of 2002, adoptions would be allowed only to countries with which a bilateral agreement was in place. Accordingly, in March 2003, I contacted the Irish ambassador, and a delegation headed by the ambassador to Malaysia and Vietnam negotiated a bilateral agreement on inter-country adoption. Both Ireland and Vietnam have signed and...