Tony Killeen (Clare, Fianna Fail)

The issues raised by amendment No. 18 ought to be viewed together with the provisions of section 32B(3)(d), which requires the Central Bank to specify the targets and criteria for assessing its performance in strategic planning. This will, in turn, inform the regulatory performance plan and provide for the assessment of regulatory performance against relevant international benchmarks. The international peer review provided under section 32M will also feed into this process and help inform the development of appropriate international benchmarks over time. On that basis, the proposals in amendment No. 18 are already addressed by section 32B.

With regard to amendment No. 19, the purpose of section 32L is to allow for the assessment of the regulatory performance of the Central Bank. The amendment seeks to provide an automatic requirement to publish information that may be highly sensitive, even where doing so seriously compromises the commercial position of financial service providers or the Central Bank in its attempts to regulate the sector effectively and stabilise the overall system. Clearly, that is not Senator Donohoe's intention. The Minister has already shown a willingness to explore whether information could be made more readily available from the Central Bank but he believes the proposed amendment is too far reaching and takes insufficient account of the genuine public interest reasons for the protection of sensitive information in these instances.