Ms Brenda McVeigh:

On the question of the impact, we have not done or even tried to do any impact assessment of how this proposal might affect Ireland if it pans out that the 11 go forward.

At the moment we feel that it is difficult for us to do that, again, because there are so many unknowns in the current proposal and bearing in mind that we have had a level of clarity from the Commission and the Council that suggests that the current proposal does not have to be the one that even the 11 are signing up to. Currently, even the 11 countries are in some way going to sign up to the unknown because the final proposal must meet with the general principles of a financial transactions tax, FTT, which means that there must be a tax or levy on financial transactions, and to some extent there is also a regulatory aspect to the issue as well. In meeting with those general principles the Commission can come forward with proposals that might not at all reflect what is in the current proposal. Therefore, it is very difficult to ask us to carry out an impact assessment on what might be a complete unknown.