Head of team: Eadoin Rock, general counsel)

Team size: 37 lawyers, six support staff

What are the most significant cases and transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

Our legal division is comprised of the legal team – which advises across all aspects of the Central Bank including regulatory, central banking and operational matters – and the Regulatory Decisions Unit – which manages the administrative sanctions inquiries and certain other decision-making processes of the Bank.

On the legal side, the division were responsible for engaging with and supporting the Department of Finance on the recently enacted Central Bank (Individual Accountability Framework) Act 2023 and are responsible for drafting the regulations the Central Bank has the power to make under this Act. Legal were responsible for drafting several Central Bank regulations including those governing mortgage measures and differential pricing imposition requirements. The legal division has advised across various supervisory, property, public procurement, and contract matters as well as key Bank projects including the review of the Consumer Protection Code. Members of the legal division also sit on the Eurosystem LEGCO Committee, which advises the Governing Council on monetary policy and financial stability matters.

The Regulatory Decisions Unit is currently supporting the Inquiry members in managing various administrative sanctions and procedure Inquiries including the INBS Inquiry and the PTSB Inquiry. These Inquiries are being heard on-site in the Central Bank, following a project to develop an on-site hearing venue. The Regulatory Decisions Unit is also responsible for advising and supporting decision-makers on various fitness and probity decisions and for implementing the changes to the Inquiry process arising from the Central Bank (Individual Accountability Framework) Act 2023.

What has been the number one challenge that has impacted you over the past year?

The number one challenge has been the constantly and rapidly changing environment, which has necessitated significant agility for the team to maintain a high quality, practical, future-focused and timely legal service. The war in Ukraine, for example, resulted in much unexpected work in relation to financial sanctions. Equally, we are now in an environment of high inflation, which necessitates a different monetary policy approach.

Has the increasing consciousness of climate change and sustainability affected your company and the team’s priorities, and if so how?

We see addressing climate change and the risks it poses to financial stability as aligned with the role of central banks and with the mandate of the Central Bank of Ireland. That mandate instructs us to serve the public interest by safeguarding monetary and financial stability and ensuring that the financial system operates in the best interests of consumers and the wider economy. The Bank is committed to ensuring that climate change considerations are incorporated into ‘business as usual’, that the financial system is resilient to climate-related risks, and that it can support the transition to a climate neutral future.

From a practical perspective, the Bank established a Climate Change Unit last year to strategically drive forward this work and to centrally oversee the integration of climate and broader sustainability considerations into our operations. As part of this, the Bank is working to measure the exposures of the Irish financial system to climate related risks, to ensure that climate risk management is embedded in the firms we regulate, and to upskill and enhance capacity building on issues related to climate risk.