Mr. Kieran Grace:

Yes. I indicated in my statement that we do support the overall aims. One of the issues at the outset, when this proposal came out, was that it was not clear how it would operate in practice. The amendments since then to define "national administrative competition authority" and "national judicial competition authority" has clarified many of the issues. The Commission itself admitted that it knew what it wanted to put down but that what appeared on paper might not have been a proper representation of that. We are happy enough with how matters have moved on since then and we can support the clarifications. Most of the issues we have had to date have been matters of clarification and trying to work out how the provisions would operate in practice.

For example, on the leniency programme, as my colleague, Ms Goggin, said, we do not have one in Ireland. In many ways, we will be starting with a blank page. Some other member states have problems because they have variants of leniency programmes and will have to adapt them. We are in an enviable position in that light. However, we want clarification of how it will actually work. While it is easy, from a legalese point of view, to describe it and how it will work in the text of a directive, our colleagues in the CCPC would have to operate the leniency programme and their front-line experience would bring another perspective to what needs to be done.

Most of our interventions and interest so far have been on clarifications. We do support the overall aims and what is in the directive. We have to make sure we know what we are agreeing to.