Mr. Neil Willoughby:

I thank the Senator. On the transposition timeline, IBEC is calling for a transposition of the stop-the-clock, the so-called delay, while negotiations continue. That is very important in order to provide legal certainty for companies and also for the Government in terms of its own work in the further transposition of it. We want to see that transposed as quickly as possible.

In terms of the broader timeline, it depends on how long the negotiations between the Council and the European Parliament take, when they eventually reach an agreement and how long that process takes at a European level. We do not know at this stage how long that will take. We could expect it to take up to a year but it could take longer, from the original proposal.

Specifically on the point about EU subsidiaries of non-EU companies, it is quite a significant issue. I raised this in my introductory remarks. There is quite a simple fix for that, which involves making sure companies come into scope with the same employee threshold to work through that. That is something we are working on with our common European affiliate, BusinessEurope, which IBEC is a member of on behalf of Ireland. That is a position IBEC holds and is also part of the position of BusinessEurope on the paper as well so it has been fed into the Council and we understand it has been raised there.