David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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I welcome our guests and thank them for their presentations. As they have said, many bodies of various shapes and sizes have moved their headquarters here post Brexit. That increases the imperative and the importance of all this.

Dr. Lavelle said that the European Parliament last week voted to adopt a report to further strengthen EWCs. A resolution has passed to recommend to the Commission the revision of the EWC directive. Our guests' proposal is that we make changes to our situation with respect to enforcement and so on. At the same time, this is occurring in Europe. There is obviously a European review. I also note that BusinessEurope sees no reason for a change to the directive. Perhaps we should also listen to its view. If the directive is going to be revised and changed, I do not know how long that will take. The Commission has approximately three months to come back. Does that mean we might see further dramatic changes to the directive in the time ahead? If we make changes now, we might be making further changes within a short period. Are they on parallel tracks? Are they interacting in some way? Perhaps our guests could explain how the European Parliament resolution of last week could impact the changes they are proposing. Should we act anyway?