Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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61. To ask the Minister for Finance if he will provide detailed information of the costs incurred by each of the five Irish based institutions in respect of the recently concluded European Central Bank asset quality review and stress tests, including details of the fees paid or owed to each professional advisory firm; the person who pays the cost of the asset quality review and the stress tests; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [42493/14]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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The Central Bank of Ireland ("CBI") has informed me that seven banks in Ireland will have to pay €17.6 million between them to meet the costs of the Comprehensive Assessment conducted by the ECB and the CBI to review their assets and test the resilience of their balance sheets to certain stress situations. The CBI also notes the following:

- Whilst, the Irish Banking system being assessed is relatively small in terms of balance sheet size versus the outer countries, it was in the top 5 countries in terms of loan files to be reviewed and collateral to be valued - the most expensive element of an Asset Quality Review ("AQR");

- In terms of banks, the CBI also had to conduct the Asset Quality Review for ACC (part of Rabobank), KBC Ireland (part of KBC Group) on a host basis, thus in cost terms were conducting the AQR for 7 banks;

- The CBI has extensive previous experience with balance sheet assessments and stress tests. Consequently it used exclusively internal expertise to conduct quality assurance on the data received from banks before it was passed to the ECB. It was then not necessary to utilise third parties to perform this function, resulting in a saving;

- All project management operations were carried out using the internal resources of the Central Bank or secondees, also resulting in a saving, due to it not being necessary to utilise third parties to perform this function, as can often be necessary;

- The CBI saved significant cost by utilising the file review results from the Balance Sheet Assessment (conducted in late 2013) where possible in this exercise (for Bank of Ireland and AIB);

The costs noted above exclude costs which may have been incurred by the banks themselves, details of which are confidential and commercially sensitive.