Mr. Gary Dunne:

The advice we received was that the net issue related to whether the exchange would have the object or effect of preventing, restricting or distorting competition in Ireland. There was a significant risk of this occurring. Ironically, greater transparency in an industry can facilitate collusion rather than inhibit it because participants then know more about what each other is doing. The issue is fundamentally quite complex and we are definitely not lawyers. We know the UK has managed to overcome this barrier and we were hopeful that we would be able to overcome it as well. The society spent money getting legal advice to see if we could achieve this, but we paused our efforts because we understand Insurance Ireland is starting a process to gather more data itself.