Mr. Gerry Cross:

I am happy to come in on that. I thank the Deputy for his question. This is really important. The context in which the Central Bank seeks to fulfil its mandate is one of the rule of law. The Deputy is asking a question in that space. It is fundamentally important. The massive importance of operating, not in a legalistic way but in a way that implements the rule of law, is something that we cleave very strongly too. When we approach the prospectus regulation, it is not that we come along and say, "Section 8 says this and section 9 says that, so therefore we just do those things". We ask what this regulation is asking us to do. What is the role it is giving us? What is the mandate we are given by law to do on behalf of the citizens of Ireland and more widely in Europe?

It is really important that Article 6, which is at the core of this and is surrounded by a whole set of provisions around ensuring completeness, comprehensibility and consistency, states that what we are looking at in this context is the financial position of the issuer. That is really important in the European context. It is why a regulation was made to replace the directive. In the context of Europe as a place with a rule of law, it is important we are implementing something that is agreed to be the law across all of Europe; not something for member states to implement differently but the law across Europe. Fundamentally, our view is that Article 6 requires us to look at the financial position as articulated in the draft prospectus.