Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)
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Question 60: To ask the Minister for Finance if he will confirm that the Irish bank stress tests carried out by BlackRock Inc., Boston Consulting Group and Barclays plc cost up to €30 million; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9969/11]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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The Central Bank of Ireland is not Exchequer funded. This matter is the responsibility of the Central Bank Commission and the Minister for Finance had no role in the matter. However, the Central Bank has informed me that the final consultancy cost is expected to be in the region of €30m, including VAT.

It is important to note that the costs relate to the three firms and third party sub-contractors. These costs also cover additional work that is being carried out during the second quarter of 2011 in relation to the assessment of INBS loan losses and review of Anglo loan loss methodologies.

Details of all firms, including third party sub-contractors are available in the Central Bank's Financial Measures Programme Report, which is available at: http://www.financialregulator.ie/industry-sectors/credit-institutions/Documents/The%20Financial%20Measures%20Programme%20Report.pdf

The Central Bank has also informed me that in light of the requirement under the EU-IMF programme to use consultants under a very tight deadline for urgent financial stability purposes, it was not possible to apply normal tender processes. However expert firms were selected from a larger list. The Central Bank invited those firms to tender and those able to provide submissions at short notice were reviewed. A selection panel (including a Central Bank appointed risk adviser) was used to assess presentations from firms. Firms were also asked to provide fee estimation and were then selected.

Firms were chosen on the basis of their expertise and knowledge, with each having a specific role in specified areas. BlackRock is a leading global provider of investment and risk advisory services to public and private clients and was commissioned to leverage their extensive expertise to provide a bottom-up loan loss forecast for the Irish banks in both a base case and a stress scenario over the next three years and lifetime. Barclays Capital provided expert advice on banking sector reorganisation and deleveraging issues. The Boston Consulting Group provided project management resources across the Financial Measures Programme, an assessment of the loan loss forecasting exercise and it also contributed to expert advice for the PCAR and PLAR.