Mr. Ivan Cooper:

It would have a very significant impact, along the lines Deputy Ó Cathasaigh suggested. A chilling effect is one way of understanding it. Board decisions are minuted. Many have argued, under freedom of information, FOI, provisions, for example, that the quality of discussion and record-keeping has been negatively impacted in some respects in the context of FOI and how that operates. What is and is not significant is an important consideration in this regard. If there is a sense that the outcome of the conversation may be that what we thought is not significant and will be recorded in minutes as a conservation having taken place about something, which then is not reported, that may have a back-up effect whereby people will be unwilling to raise an issue for fear of the fact there will have to be a discussion about it, which will be minuted in due course and so on.

We feel that to protect against that, given trustees behave in ways that have to do with high levels of integrity, the logic is that all these discussions will, in fact, take place, but that the more likely outcome is that organisations will feel they will have to report.

Rather than suppressing interaction at boards, we feel that the more likely outcome would be an over-reporting. This is probably what will come out of it. Associated with that over-reporting will be worry and alarm. This is the issue. This is how it will manifest. It will manifest in the hearts and minds of trustees about the fact that they have to report something to the regulator, for which there may now be consequences because they would not be willing to take the risk of not reporting something, which then subsequently turns out to be significant.

Under the legislation in the UK there is an obligation to report serious incidents, which is past tense and stuff that has happened and not stuff that may happen or will happen. We believe this may be a more apt and appropriate solution, which would make it clear that trustees have an obligation to report on stuff that has happened rather than stuff that may happen.