About

Eadaoin Rock, general counsel, leads the 35 lawyers and six support staff that make up one of the largest and most accomplished legal teams in Ireland. The legal department is split into the legal division, which advises across all aspects of the Central Bank and the regulatory decisions unit (RDU). The bank recently merged the financial regulation and central banking teams in the legal division so as to recognise the synergies in these areas and to ensure a broader base of knowledge and experience across the team. On the technology side, the legal division is shortly to introduce an electronic document and records management system. This will be of significant benefit in enabling legal advices to be readily accessible and knowledge shared. The RDU, put in place a dedicated team to manage the INBS Inquiry which is now at public hearing. The INBS inquiry began 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, which involved significant innovation and stakeholder management from the INBS Inquiry team to ensure that this Inquiry could be run on an electronic basis. On the other half of the department, the legal division was responsible for drafting a number of central bank regulations including, for example, the mortgage measures regulations and regulations imposing requirements in relation to lending to small and medium enterprises. The legal division has also assisted government departments in a number of significant transpositions of EU law such as MIFID II and Solvency II as well as primary legislative amendments. The legal division has also managed a number of Central Bank court applications including resolving various credit unions and recently appointing an administrator to an insurance company, CBL Insurance Europe. The legal division has also been an advisor and a support on key Central Bank projects including, for example, the tracker mortgage review project and a GDPR project. Louise Carpendale, head of the RDU has been influential in managing the INBS Inquiry hearing and ensuring it could be run on a paperless basis. Paschal Finn, a head of function in the legal division, has developed a number of key initiatives to improve processes and procedures around the exercise of regulatory powers and to ensure that overall the team provides a strong regulatory advice service. Grace O’Mahony, another head of function in the legal division has developed a strong in-house operations legal team, such that this work is now largely carried out in-house. They are all assisted by very strong and dedicated teams. There has been increasing work on the legislative side owing to developments at a national and European level and a new area of work has been advising the Central Bank on private member bills, of which there has been an increase owing to the current Government structure.