Brussels presses Ireland to provide individual bank data

The European Commission is pressing Ireland to resume providing it with data for individual domestic banks for its monitoring work after the Department of Finance ended the practice in September of last year.

This is revealed in the Commission’s latest post-bailout programme surveillance (PPS) report, which had to use aggregated data for the Irish banks.

“In May 2014, the Commission and the ECB reached an agreement with the Irish authorities to provide . . . data that are not in the public domain but necessary to carry out country surveillance,” the report stated.

“This included disaggregated financial and regulatory information and data on domestic individual Irish banks. Although the Commission and the ECB signalled their continued interest, the agreement concerning bank-by-bank data was not renewed after the initial 12 months, and in September 2015 the Irish authorities discontinued the provision of data.”

The Commission noted that Spain and Portugal continue to provide this information, subject to confidentiality.

“The Commission is still discussing with the Irish authorities the possibility of resuming sharing bank-by-bank data under PPS,” the report stated.

The commission told The Irish Times yesterday that the department had stopped providing the data, claiming confidentiality and legal obstacles.

Critical

It said individual bank data was critical for its monitoring work, “due to the importance of the state-owned domestic banks and their history during the financial crisis”.

“The profitability of the domestic banks still remains fragile,” it added.

In response, the Department of Finance said: "We are in discussions with the Commission on this issue. We note that the SSM [Single Supervisory Mechanism] is now in place and this should provide appropriate EU level warnings of concerns with the banking sector. The relevant data is held by the Central Bank of Ireland and the SSM."

The Central Bank declined to comment. It is understood the regulator believes it is legally prohibited from providing such information to the commission.