When  Mr Brian Lenihan the Irish Minister for Finance made his speech in the Irish parliament (the Dail) on 30 March 2010 he set out the huge debts which the Irish taxpayer would have to finance in order to put the Irish banks back into a stable position. After his discussion of the loans that would be taken over by the new state agency Nama and the discounts to be applied to each individual bank, he then set out how much of additional recapitalisation funds would be needed in order for each individual bank to meet the new capital requirement of 8% reserves as set out by the new financial regulator.
~The new Financial regulator is Mr Matthew Elderfield who had been the former head of regulation in Bermuda. He is the first head of either the Financial Regulatory Service or the central bank of Ireland who has not come from internal appointment within these organisations.
The new governor of the Central Bank is Mr Patrick Honohan who was a former head of international monetary economics at Trinity College
The lack of independence in these institutions was a commonly perceived weakness and as external appointments they presumably have no allegiances or history with any of the players in the Irish banking system. This has been a breath of fresh air for the country which will hopefully mean a far more independent control of the banking sector. Already he has made his mark by imposing the newer tighter 8% capital reserve on the banks. This has been based on research and on emerging international best practise
This new capital reserve will help ensure that the current fiasco of huge impairments to the loan books of Irish banks is not repeated and they will in future have reserves to fall back on to cover any losses that may arise in the future. The main objective of the Central bank and financial regulators appointments is to reinstill confidence among the foreign banks and lenders that supply funds to the Irish banking system. By setting in place strong financial regulations potential lenders and investors in Irish banks will hopefully once again see fit to lend and invest in these banks.
This trend of taking a harder more proactive approach has also been seen  Mr Elderfield appointing two administrators to Quinn Insurance due to a worry that the insurance company has not got the reserves to cover all potential claims. For the future of the economy to be secured and for business to recover within Ireland it is necessary to have a strong banking system which has enough funds and capital to be able to start lending again. Of course these new tighter controls are only what should have been in place all the time. Although the realisation that we need to run our financial system properly has come too late to save us from huge government debts hopefully it will prevent a reoccurrence of the mistakes of the past.