Mr. Philip Sack:

To answer the Deputy's last question first, the Irish Parliament needs to act straight away, without reference to the European Parliament's report. The European Parliament has produced an own-initiative report seeking changes to the directive. That does not of itself make any changes to it. To make changes to the directive would require the European Commission to come forward with a proposal and for that proposal to then be agreed by the EU Council and the European Parliament. That process can take years. I know because I was involved in several such processes when I worked for the UK Government. It may result in nothing at all because if there is no agreement between the Council and the Parliament, there will be no revision of the directive. The process could take a very long time. There is no guarantee that the Commission will make a proposal although I note that Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, when she was seeking its approval to become President of the Commission, promised the European Parliament that if it were to make a report requesting legislative change, she would act. She made a personal commitment to do so. We will have to wait and see how she will do it. There are also some better regulation rules in place which state that an increase in regulation requires burdens to be eased in the same areas. It will be interesting to see how that might work out in all of this. However, the timeframe involved could be very long. The process may not result in anything at all.