{"id":416955,"date":"2026-04-25T14:07:30","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T14:07:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/416955\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T14:07:30","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T14:07:30","slug":"high-court-rebuke-erodes-central-bank-authority-as-its-powers-grow-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/416955\/","title":{"rendered":"High Court rebuke erodes central bank authority as its powers grow \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

RT\u00c9 didn\u2019t linger after January\u2019s surprise resignation of Mari Hurley, who, in 18 months as chief financial officer, helped steady the broadcaster\u2019s shaky finances and tightened financial controls <\/a>after a series of scandals.<\/p>\n

On Monday last week it unveiled her successor: the Central Bank of Ireland\u2019s director of finance and business performance Annemarie Britz. Little known outside of financial circles<\/a>, the South African has built a strong reputation for rigorous oversight of budgets, complex projects and an intricate balance sheet that at one stage topped \u20ac200 billion \u2013 while also being widely regarded in the bank as highly collegiate. <\/p>\n

The timing of the announcement, however, wasn\u2019t ideal. Within days, Britz appeared in a dense, 184-page High Court judgment on a flawed Central Bank of Ireland <\/a>fitness investigation into a former senior funds industry executive. <\/p>\n

Britz wasn\u2019t the one to decide to carry out the inquiry. Nor was she the one to lead the investigation, which High Court president Judge David Barniville said was \u201cirretrievably tainted\u201d by errors. They were the responsibility of other officials, John Lynch and Eoghan O\u2019Regan, respectively. <\/p>\n

But she was the fresh set of eyes and ears appointed as decision maker \u2013 in a process designed to have various checks and balances \u2013 on whether the former manager should be sanctioned or not. <\/p>\n

Barniville concluded the decision maker failed to recognise that the man\u2019s \u201cright to natural and constitutional justice and basic fairness of procedures\u201d had been breached during the investigation phase when he was not given an oral hearing, especially when his \u201ccredibility and honesty were very much in question\u201d. <\/p>\n

Britz\u2019s agreement to meet the man before making the decision to prohibit him for one year \u2013 subject to the court\u2019s approval \u2013 amounted to little more than a box-ticking exercise, the judge said. <\/p>\n

It was \u201cincomprehensible\u201d she did not ask any questions or challenge the man in any way during the meeting, when he claimed there were several factual errors in the investigation <\/a>report and that some relevant material had been ignored, he added. <\/p>\n

In fairness to Britz, this was far from her wheelhouse. The whole process raises questions as to why the central bank can call on any of its directors \u2013 from heads of data to economic statistics \u2013 to act as the final arbiters on such investigations. Surely these determinations should be handled by independent external parties that are experts in legal procedure and constitutional rights.<\/p>\n

The man \u2013 who was not named in the ruling and who wished to retain anonymity in an interview with The Irish Times <\/a>this week \u2013 was an executive director of an Irish investment fund management company that oversaw sub-funds that fed into master funds managed by a sister company in the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

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In a nutshell, the central bank contended the man should have informed it when he learned that the UK fund manager in charge of the master fund \u2013 referred to as GH \u2013 was the subject of an internal investigation that would result in him being suspended on July 31st, 2018. The suspension \u2013 and subsequent firing of GH for failing to manage conflicts of interest and breaching the group\u2019s gifts and entertainment policy \u2013 would result in the Irish sub-funds being temporarily frozen. <\/p>\n

The Irish investigation concluded that the man was \u201cnot candid and truthful and was not full, fair and accurate in all respects in his dealings with the central bank\u201d \u2013 even though he was acting on legal advice on what should be disclosed and when. <\/p>\n

Indeed, a central bank frequently asked questions document, published in 2018 on fitness and probity, addressed the very question.<\/p>\n

It stated that firms should \u201ctake a practical approach and investigate such matters before going to the central bank with potentially unrealised concerns\u201d. It should be notified immediately once an investigation found against an individual, it said.<\/p>\n

The judge refused to rubber-stamp the prohibition. And he said that sending the case back to the central bank to do its homework again would give rise to another serious injustice if he were subjected to further investigation. <\/p>\n

But there is no justice here for the man, who told The Irish Times <\/a>this week of how he has run down his pension pot as he has struggled to find work, is behind on mortgage payments, and in danger of losing his family home. <\/p>\n

The ruling was published six years after the man was forced to quit because he could not say he faced no issues in his annual regulatory review, and more than three years after the court heard a case … concerning a one-year ban. <\/p>\n

In the end, the court was also unable to look at the actual merits of the case. <\/p>\n

There also doesn\u2019t appear to be any obvious route to compensation for the man. How would the central bank have acted if a firm it regulates were to hold such a defective process? <\/p>\n

This case, together with a highly critical judgment in 2024 from the Irish Financial Services Appeals Tribunal<\/a> (Ifsat) about the central bank\u2019s refusal to approve a board nominee for a fund<\/a>, undermines the hard-won moral authority of the regulator. It reinforces a long-held view in financial circles that the pendulum has swung too hard the other way \u2013 at an institution scarred by coming out of post-crisis reports almost as badly as the firms they supervised. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s even more concerning in light of the regulator receiving additional powers in recent years, making it easier to go after senior executives in financial firms for potential wrongdoing. The Ifsat judgment, which found that the central bank \u201cdenied fair procedures at every stage\u201d to that individual, saw the regulator overhaul its executive vetting system. <\/p>\n

Sources say the Barniville ruling \u2013 communicated to both sides almost a year before it was published \u2013 will have a similar influence on fitness and probity investigations. It must. <\/p>\n

The bank\u2019s enforcement team, meanwhile, will be forgiven for feeling nervous about an Ifsat appeal taken last year by former PTSB chief executive David Guinane, after a central bank inquiry reprimanded and fined him \u20ac80,000 for the lender\u2019s mishandling of tracker mortgages. <\/p>\n

It is not clear when the findings of that appeal will emerge, but it could make for interesting reading. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RT\u00c9 didn\u2019t linger after January\u2019s surprise resignation of Mari Hurley, who, in 18 months as chief financial officer,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":416956,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,20927,73,61,60,6085],"class_list":["post-416955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-central-bank-of-ireland","tag-high-court","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-rte"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}