Ms Brenda McVeigh:

I can only repeat what I have said and I do not want to irritate anybody with some of these repetitions and with what my colleague from the Department of Justice has said. There is no insinuation of guilt in respect of being deemed a PEP. It is about preventative measures; that is number one. I feel the pain because I hear this even from colleagues. I have been lucky that I have not had to experience it yet. I have not had to do anything with my bank in quite a while other than day-to-day business, but I do hear from colleagues who are experiencing this pain so I do get it. I also hear from EU colleagues that this is a pain felt everywhere. There has been consensus across the EU that this is necessary to protect the integrity of the financial system and, indeed, the broader economies of member states. The Deputy has inferred several times maybe that directives are reached in a somewhat obscure way but they are not. I have said repeatedly, and I have also said it in relation to FATF. We get mandates from the elected Minister regarding any controversial measures that are going into directives, and we are open to scrutiny by the Parliament here to come in and discuss anything in a draft directive or draft package of any nature. Ultimately, it is elected representatives in the European Parliament who sign off on these directives, who signed off on the previous five AML directives, and who will be involved in the sign-off for the new package and new rule book, which is both directives and regulations. We deal with parliamentarians in Europe who are constantly asking what is this or that. Commissioner McGuinness is very hands-on because with the Commission seat she holds she has a very strong interest in what is being developed in this package. It would not be factual to say that elected representatives are not effectively the sign-off and the ultimate authority as to what goes into a directive at EU level.