Mr. Colm Kincaid:

I do not believe any banks in Ireland are operating the instant payments element of that. As the Deputy will be aware, it has had a mixed application across the EU and the EU legislation is now moving to make it mandatory. To be clear, in Ireland we have the benefit of being able to make euro-area payments across the Eurosystem and of course as a member of the EU we also have the passporting rights under the payment services directive for firms to provide their services across borders into Ireland and for people to access payment systems across the EU. The instant payments element of SEPA is yet to be made mandatory across the EU.