Central Bank official gets key department role

THE SENIOR Central Bank official who examined how other countries dealt with mortgage arrears cases has been appointed to the new role of chief risk officer at the Department of Finance.

Dermot Monaghan was leader of the prudential analytics team at the Central Bank and has been seconded to the position in the department as part of the organisation’s new structure created under secretary general John Moran.

Mr Monaghan’s work assisted the Central Bank in developing the mortgage arrears resolution strategy (Mars) designed to tackle increasing arrears on Irish lenders’ mortgage books.

He assessed the operational capacity of the banks to deal with arrears cases after reviewing similar models in other countries.

Mr Monaghan worked on the stress-testing of the Irish banks last year, which increased the Government capital injections into the banks to €64 billion.

He helped design the tests with outside consultants, US firm Blackrock.

A graduate of Queen’s University in Belfast and Dublin Institute of Technology, Mr Monaghan has worked at Pioneer Alternative Investments and German-owned, Dublin-based Depfa Bank.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Finance said Mr Monaghan would be reporting to the department’s chief financial officer, Gareth O’Neill, who in turn is reporting to Mr Moran.

The department announced an internal reorganisation in May which included the creation of an economics division to focus on economic planning and monitoring.