he admitted "But the Central Bank and the Financial Regulator seemed happy. They were never into us saying – ever – 'Listen, we must put legislation and control on the banks'. That never happened." The director general of the Free Legal Advice Centres in October 2009 said, the code of conduct on mortgage arrears produced by the Financial Regulator was "deeply disappointing", and did not offer enough protection for consumers. In a speech, the Governor of the Central Bank said that "ignorance and inattention" by FR staff were to blame for regulatory failure. The Consumer Consultative Panel, in December 2009 said that they were unable to function for almost a year because officials ignored requests for meetings and "we believe it is unacceptable that the board of the Financial Regulator has failed to take responsibility for their stewardship of the organisation during the last six years.The FR did not understand many of the sectors and financial products it regulates. These failings undermines their ability to enhance or enforce corporate governance in the wider financial services sector.It also warned "that the reforms announced to date were not sufficient to avert more crisis' in the future." The Financial Regulator should give an annual statement to the Dáil on bank supervision to make regulation ‘'more accountable'’, the Comptroller and Auditor General said in March 2010 after highlighting shortcomings in financial regulation leading up to the financial crisis . The next month, the FR Chief Executive outlined his shock at the poor level of financial regulation he discovered when he started his job the previous January and "it is clear to me we need to undertake a fundamental overhaul of the regulatory model for financial services in Ireland. He also said that there was a "critical absence of intellectual firepower within his staff At the same time the influential German newspaper Siddeutsche Zeitung described as "remarkable" the FR's handling of a whistleblower's revelations that an Irish subsidiary of a central European bank had 40 times the permitted level of deviation of minimum liquidity requirements. They also did not inform the parent bank and the relevant regulatory authority on the continent. High risk and sloppy lending practices at the Irish Nationwide Building Society were reported to the Financial Regulator by external accountants over a long period but did not change its behaviour. The former head of compliance, became a whistle blower by reporting "dodgy practices"