Irish Examiner View: Bank move demands stronger supervision

KBC exit to leave just three retail banks in the country

Belgian giant KBC Group will cease operations in Ireland after more than 40 years here.

Tomorrow, when he marks his 80th birthday, President Michael D Higgins will probably, as most people who reach that grand milestone do, take a moment to reflect on where the eight decades that have passed since he was born in Limerick have gone. He may, like others, try to reach some understanding of why or how the passage of time is so relentless, why it is so indifferent to our capacity to maximise its opportunities or, all too often, learn its lessons.

It is not necessary to look back over 80 years to find chastening lessons. One, in economic terms and in terms of opportunity lost and wealth destroyed, took place just 13 years ago when our banking system, riddled with greed-driven recklessness, imploded. That was so traumatic that time may have pushed its lessons, particularly around regulation and oversight, towards the shadows. That, as the Davy scandal reminds us, is unwise. Anyone who dared suggest in 2008 that banks should face the consequences of their actions were told, with no little degree of patronising hubris, that "they were too big to fail."