Mr. Brendan Bruen:

In practice - colleagues in the Department of Finance may have comments on this - individual institutions are expected to have risk-based procedures in place. It is not necessarily a black and white question of whether someone is a PEP and therefore enhanced due diligence should be applied. It is rather a case that if a person is holding a position which is, by its nature, high risk, then there is an obligation on a bank to take appropriate and proportionate steps in response to that. We can become very focused on whether someone falls into a PEP bracket or not. It is more that, for each client relationship across all of money laundering, not just in respect of PEPs, a risk-based approach should be taken. The risk associated with the person should then be identified and further due diligence measures taken, if necessary.

On the guidance on this, provision 37(12) was actually added in the 2021 legislation. We have been conscious that, soon after that legislation was enacted, the sixth package was published. We are conscious of not putting in place something that will not last so that if, as is highly likely, the Irish rule book is replaced by a cross-European rule book, we want to have something in position that is consistent with the direction of travel. It is something we have been conscious of the European developments on. The worst thing we could do would be to wade into definitions, guidance and practices on a firm-by-firm basis for perhaps two or three years before it all changes again on a European level.