About

Prior to joining the Central Bank of Ireland, Eadaoin Rock trained and qualified in Arthur Cox where she was a senior associate in the financial services group specialising primarily in financial regulation. She joined the Central Bank as a senior legal counsel in 2011 and was promoted to the position of deputy head of legal, financial regulation in 2013. In 2015, she was appointed to her current role as general counsel of the Central Bank. In this role, Rock has ensured that the legal division has become fully embedded in decision making processes and sits as an advisor on all key policy and decision-making committees. She highlights that, ‘this ensures that the Central Bank makes decisions and forms policy with a clear understanding of legal issues and also that legal can more readily play a broader “advisor” role, which is where the legal department can add real value. This enables the Central Bank to more effectively manage legal risk’. Rock introduced an electronic and document management system and a legal referral process, which provides a clear process for the referral of legal queries with clear response times along with a detailed satisfaction survey to garner feedback and ensure continuous improvement. She also introduced various relationship management and training initiatives to ensure that the legal division fully supports all divisions with their key priorities and has a clear understanding of their needs and strategic objectives. Rock has been instrumental in leading legal in assisting the Bank in managing the risks from Brexit. She highlights that, ‘the unprecedented and complex nature of Brexit has led to significant support being required from legal and a need to develop innovative solutions including, for example, legislative fixes to mitigate risks’. Rock leads on the development of key legislation in relation to the Central Bank’s mandate and manages its responses to various private member bills that would have a significant impact on the Bank’s functions. She has also lead the legal division in using the Central Bank’s new regulation making powers to make various regulations. The legal division has also been an advisor and a support on key Central Bank projects and reviews, including, for example, the tracker mortgage review, the culture report and the GDPR project. The legal division has also recently managed a number of Central Bank court applications including resolving various credit unions and appointing an administrator to an insurance company, CBL Insurance Europe. The regulatory decisions unit which sits in the legal division is currently supporting the first administrative sanctions procedure inquiries including the INBS inquiry. The INBS inquiry began public hearings in December 2017 and it is the first inquiry being run on a paperless basis in Ireland. The inquiry is using the “trial director evidence presentation system” and an electronic document platform to store documents. This has involved significant innovation and stakeholder management to ensure that this Inquiry could be run on an electronic basis.