Department of Finance loses senior banking expert

The Department of Finance has lost another senior banking expert hired during the crisis to help avert the collapse of the financial system.

Neil Ryan, a former executive with Swiss investment bank UBS and US lender Wells Fargo, who joined the department at the height of the financial turmoil in July 2011, handed in his notice in recent weeks and will leave in July. It is understood he will continue to work in Dublin, though not in the banking sector.

His resignation follows the return to the private sector in recent years of senior bankers, including Michael Torpey and John Moran, who joined the department to help deal with the crisis after the government guaranteed the financial system in 2008.

Mr Torpey was hired by Bank of Ireland as chief executive of its corporate and treasury division in 2013 after three years in officialdom. He previously worked in Ulster Bank and Irish Life & Permanent. Moran joined the Department of Finance in 2011 as head of banking before being promoted to head of the ministry a year later. He quit in 2014 to return to the private sector.

Mr Ryan worked closely with banks on shrinking their balance sheets under direction of Ireland’s bailout troika. He was seconded to Irish Bank Resolution Corp in 2012 to help manage the failed bank’s wind-down, before it was put into liquidation.

He worked last year with Simon Harris on a 2015-2020 plan for the International Financial Services Centre.

A spokesman for the department declined to comment on Mr Ryan’s departure. It has overhauled how it carries out appointments since the onset of the crisis.