Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I would describe it as "dangerous competition". I have been stressing to people I have met at a political level the importance of a transitional arrangement to protect the security of our financial system in this entire process because the financial architecture we have across Europe underpins day-to-day business, including exporting, businesses getting loans and trade. It is important to have a transitional arrangement in place and the Taoiseach spoke about this at another forum earlier. In that way, we can have the negotiations in a calm and safe environment. I am bothered when I hear that other jurisdictions are potentially making commitments on the level of regulation and supervision they might put in place when we work to a common framework under the ECB and various European laws and standards. We are in a competitive environment. We are not being predatory regarding London, as the Minister has said, but we want to facilitate companies where we can and, therefore, we are competing with other jurisdictions. What we have heard from some companies makes me question whether they are being prudent. If a significant company was to choose another jurisdiction as its location and what it had been led to believe did not transpire to be true and created difficulties for it, that would be worrying. We have been in communication with our European partners on this. I am visiting Brussels next week to meet members of the Commission and I will make that point to them.