Financial regulator - An audacious admission

THE chairman of the Financial Services Regulatory Authority didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know when he told an Oireachtas hearing that some bank executives had behaved in a totally “unacceptable” way.

Mr Jim Farrell also told the committee that “substantial change” was required to the office.

Surprise, surprise. The authority is one of the institutions we depend on to keep the banks on the straight and narrow. Because it did not our situation is a lot worse than it might have otherwise been.

Mr Farrell said the Anglo Irish boss Sean Fitzpatrick’s directors’ loans had first been discovered on Irish Nationwide’s books in September 2007 but no action was taken because officials were under pressure with normal and abnormal work.

This is an audacious admission. An admission that the authority is not fit for purpose and that it failed in its obligations to each and every citizen of this state.

There have been resignations but resignations without penalties are another slap in the face for everyone feeling the brunt of the recession.