Mr. Gabriel Makhlouf:

The Deputy's question contains too many hypotheticals for me to answer in a way that she might be satisfied with. As I said earlier, our working assumption is that laws that are passed by the Oireachtas and signed off by the President are laws that are consistent with European law so apply and have effect. That is our working assumption. We would not say, "Well, this can't be consistent and we are going to ignore it or something." We do not do that. If that surprisingly happens, I think the way it would ultimately be established would be from judgment by the European Court of Justice, for example, under an action taken by the European Commission or by somebody else and then, potentially, there would be consequences but we are into hypotheticals now.

I think the Deputy asked the following question before moving to the hypothetical. Russia is the example of how this can be stopped, if that is the objective. Another possibility is that we, collectively, the European Union, decides to change the prospectus regulation in some way but that would probably be a much more complicated way and I would not know if there is even interest in doing that. Those are the two obvious routes because, as the Deputy says, we are dealing with European law here. At the end of the day, it is European law and if the Oireachtas and other member states want to change it, they then need to work together to change it, but we just have to follow whatever it is the law is.