Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

The purpose is to ensure we have a flexible business environment while at the same time protecting, where required — as was the objective of the part of the Bill — those who have taken out mortgages in the sub-prime market, as we all understand the term.

The definitional requirements are to ensure that the Financial Regulator has flexibility with regard to others who operate within the circumstances outlined in the three cases to which I referred. Rather than imposing an obligation which might be detrimental to conducting business, the amendment enables the Financial Regulator, where he is satisfied that there is no risk to consumers, to allow such business to proceed. It is a question of finding a mechanism which allows the Financial Regulator to decide whether the exemption should apply given the type of business in which some of the people in question are engaged and, at the same time, ensure there is no risk to consumers.

To incorporate this matter would have been beyond the remit of what we were trying to achieve in the definitional context of the discussion.

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