Mr. John Murphy:

I would be happy to do that. When that directive was adopted, the transposition date was 11 May 2013. The Department worked with the Health and Safety Authority and put together a draft that was submitted to the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel in November 2012. We would have met the deadline had that draft been acceptable. The Office of the Parliamentary Counsel identified concerns over whether it is appropriate to transpose the directive under the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act or under the European Communities Act 1972. It raised the mismatch between the penalties provisions in the directive and the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act. It suggested there should be an alternative approach to transposing the directive. It has not been possible to sort that out as quickly as we would have liked. We are at an advanced stage of finalising the transposition according to the alternative approach required by the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel. We have received an infringement notice in the past week. We have two months in which to issue a formal response to that. I expect that it will involve our having transposed the directive. That is the effective deadline we are operating within. We worked on this in good faith on a basis that we felt was appropriate. We have to bow to legal advice.