Ms Brenda McVeigh:

Yes, it is. There is a fundamental aspect to this discussion. Deputy Boyd Barrett referred to democracy; he argued that one must look at the pros and cons of any proposal, and I agree with him. However, there are 17 countries out of 28 that are saying this directive is not working. I have attended working party meetings and if it was working effectively the eleven countries would have adopted it by now, because the adoption date was September 2013. It is agreed among 28 member states that something in this directive is not working. All we are saying is that it is not working in its current format; we are not saying we will always stay out of the financial transaction tax. We have said we are staying out of this draft of it, as are most of the countries in Europe. We are obviously sharing a viewpoint with most other member states and, I suggest, probably with all states at this point. The view is that there is something wrong with this measure and we should not jump into it.

On the point about the moneys that could be raised, equally, one must consider the other side of that argument and the damage this could do to the markets. If it wipes out the repo or repurchase agreement markets we will have problems. Liquidity is gone and we have real problems in that area. We also have problems with our sovereign trading. That is another aspect of this measure. I accept that a simplistic view - I am not suggesting the Deputy's view is such - would be that it is raising all this money. However, the damage it is doing on the other side is what we must take into account. We cannot ignore possibilities for the sake of the big-----