Leading up to the euro zone's most expensive bank bailout, Ireland had just two three-person teams supervising its domestic banks of Bank of Ireland (>> Bank of Ireland), Anglo Irish Bank, Allied Irish Bank (>> Allied Irish Banks PLC) and Irish Life and Permanent, Mary Burke said.

Another four-person team, only three of whom were full-time employees, were responsible for eight other institutions, including Irish Nationwide, a building society which was liquidated following a state rescue.

"If you have one-and-a-half people dealing with a bank, David and Goliath might be an understatement," said Burke, who is now head of prudential policy at Ireland's central bank.

"The level of resources and the associated level of available specialist expertise was not such as to be capable of delivering intrusive supervision - even in a 'business as usual' mode of operation."

Irish lawmakers are for the first time questioning bank executives, regulators and politicians in charge when Ireland's banks imploded seven years ago and will question former financial regulator Patrick Neary in a hearing on Thursday.

The head of the central bank at the time, John Hurley, told the inquiry last week that financial regulation alone could not have prevented Ireland's crisis but that Neary, not he, was responsible for monitoring the banks.

Burke said on Wednesday the central bank's financial regulatory arm had a staff of just 50 to supervise around 80 Irish-licensed banks and branches of foreign lenders.

Following an overhaul of regulation, the central bank has boosted its staffing number by one-third since 2008 and had over 600 people assigned to regulatory areas last year, almost double the number six years ago, according to its annual reports.

Burke said such a response was initially slow and that a request for additional staff in May 2008, four months before the government issued a blanket guarantee on all bank liabilities in the face of a potential collapse, was effectively refused.

"It is difficult to convey the scale of pressures management and staff in the Banking Supervision Department were working under, particularly from autumn 2007 onwards," Burke said in written evidence to the inquiry.

"It was not a question of somehow multi-tasking; it was an unrelenting onslaught of demands with staff working long hours which ultimately became unreasonable and unsustainable."

(Editing by David Evans)

By Padraic Halpin

Stocks treated in this article : Allied Irish Banks PLC, Bank of Ireland