Mr. Colm Forde:

We are entering into speculation at this point because those issues have not been thought through. I can only say that the overriding principle, as I set out at the beginning, from both the Draghi report and the new Commission - the programme for Government and our Ministers have been very strong in this regard - and the ambition are to reduce the unnecessary regulatory burden while still remaining loyal to the core policy objective. It would not be consistent with that ambition if there were an enhanced regulatory burden on companies because they would then be classified as mid-caps. My take at the outset, without knowing the detail, is that large companies would be classified downwards to small mid-caps as opposed to SMEs being classified up to small mid-caps. I hope that is helpful.

In terms of these omnibus proposals, there are four files in the first omnibus and they apply across different Departments. It is difficult to have coherence when dealing with omnibus proposals. For example, the small mid-caps file is not one with which we in our Department will be dealing, from what I understand.