Central Bank keeps running in blinkers

Sticking with the goings-on in the Committee of Public Accounts, it is hard to see who benefits from the public washing of some very dirty laundry.

One of the first victims of the process may prove to be the Central Bank's hopes of convincing the Government to allow it to become the controlling organisation of the proposed single financial regulator.

Mr Maurice O'Connell has stuck like a broken record to the position that the Bank's sole responsibility is prudential, ensuring banks' solvency.

Despite questioning by the committee, he sees no reason why such a role should include ensuring the banks are not complicit in breaking the law or encouraging actions that might affect their reputation in the stock market, their performance and, in extremis, their solvency.

The Bank's insistence on sticking rigidly to the letter rather than the spirit of supervision and its absolutism on the supremacy of prudential supervision over all other regulatory roles will hardly have enhanced its chances of winning the new regulatory post.

Not that either AIB or the memo-less Civil Service is smelling of roses currently.