Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Financial services infrastructure is a very important part of this piece in terms of future-proofing our Irish financial services, IFS, offering, as the Deputy points out. When we look at certain parts of infrastructure and the potential for it to relocate or establish itself here, there are only a few players in the market, so we cannot be precise about exactly what conversations we have had because it will potentially be quite clear which companies we have been talking to.

There are a number of different aspects to infrastructure. Are we talking about the technology and resources of particular entities or firms that are currently operating here? Are we talking about multilateral trading facilities, MTFs? Are we talking about central security depositories, CSDs, or central counterparties, CCPs? There were different elements to supports over the course of the last year. We have been engaging with different firms which are potentially looking at establishing a presence here or relocating a particular activity here. We are then talking to other companies that are not directly financial services companies themselves, but an element of their business is significant enough that they have a subsidiary that might be operating in a particular area, for example, for payments.

We have the IFS2020 strategy, which is a five-year strategy for increasing our international financial services offering. We worked with industry to develop that strategy. As a result of having that strategy in place since 2015, it meant we were ahead of the game in attracting financial services firms into Ireland to allow that continuity of service into the Single Market. Not every company that relocates out of the UK is going to come here. We have to be honest about this. There is going to be a flow to this. From the meetings I have already had and from the decisions that have already been taken by companies, there will be a strong flow to Ireland. It is up to the companies themselves to decide when they want to notify the public, their customers, their staff, shareholders and regulators in jurisdictions in which they are currently based. When they do that, then we will be in a position to comment publicly about that. Companies will be relocating here, but they will also relocate to other jurisdictions in Europe.

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