Mr. Gerry Cross:

I agree with what Mr. Gilvarry has said and I would like to add to it by mentioning another two aspects of this matter. As Mr. Gilvarry has articulated, we will have a very large financial services centre right beside the EU but just outside it. For that reason, over the past year a great deal of concern has been articulated about the risk that firms will pretend to be in Europe while actually being in the UK, which could allow them to get around European rules. One of the arguments that has been made is that we need to stop firms outsourcing outside Europe as a way of getting around European rules. We would not agree with that. From our perspective, it is important that outsourcing is done well and that there is substance in Europe and in the Irish jurisdiction. Over the past three years, we have built a whole framework to ensure there is significant presence within the Irish jurisdiction in the case of the funds industry, for example.

The second aspect of this matter I would like to mention is that when the UK decided to leave the EU, the Commission and many other interests asked what the capital markets union would look like without the UK. That galvanised lots of thinking about the possible need to create a more centralised supervisor as a counterpart to the UK authorities. I understand that is part of the thinking behind some of the proposals to move powers to the ESMA. We would say that the right route for this probably involves convergence under the current model rather than significant centralisation.