V.  Money and financial stability  A final issue that I would like to briefly address concerns the role of money and credit – the usefulness of monitoring and assessing monetary and credit developments – in the performance of another major central bank task, namely the safeguarding of financial stability.
Market-based finance plays an important role in economic activity but can be a source of risk. The relative size of Ireland’s market-based finance sector (to the domestic economy) is among the largest globally and it has a predominantly international focus. It is dominated by investment funds and money market funds, which account for around two thirds of total assets.