BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  Whitaker’s 1976 talk, printed in the Bank’s 1976 Annual Report: “An Ceangal le Sterling: An Cheart é a Bhriseadh?”) Thereafter change came relatively rapidly as the Central Bank had to respond to a changing external environment.
Creation of the European Monetary System did bring the foreshadowed end to the sterling link in 1979, but the new and brittle exchange rate regime was associated with acute monetary management challenges at a time of acute domestic fiscal pressure.