Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As a supplementary question, and without Mr. O'Dwyer putting himself in a corner or anything like that, what is his sense of what will happen? Will the agreement on adequacy decisions go through? I take his point regarding the role of the Department of Justice. This committee should recommend to the Department that it adopt a high profile when it makes its decision in this regard.

Mr. O'Dwyer has his regulator's hat on, but one assumes that he will also be approaching this matter with the national interest in mind. Subject to what happens ultimately of course, does Mr. O'Dwyer have a sense of whether this agreement will go through? If he does have the sense that it will go through, then the major priority is for our Department of Justice to push the agreement. One assumes that other countries would be fairly neutral about this issue. If the agreement was acceptable for us and the Commission, one would assume in that case that countries like France, Norway or Italy would not have a big problem in this regard.