Banking watchdog regaining public trust

Ireland’s banking watchdog has regained trust since the economic crisis, and financial firms looking for a post-Brexit home will be properly scrutinised, one of the country’s business chiefs has said.

Kevin Sherry, head of the Government’s business development agency, Enterprise Ireland, said it was important to differentiate between retail bank lending failures which led to our housing bubble, and Ireland’s track record with international financial services, which “continued to survive and prosper”.

He said: “There were insufficient controls in place in relation to the percentage of borrowing that someone could secure in that area, for domestic housing, and as a result the banks suffered heavily in that. But it wasn’t in [broader] financial services.”