Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. My officials, and officials in the Central Bank of Ireland, as our independent regulator, have been carefully monitoring developments to identify potential challenges in banking and financial services that could arise from Brexit and to take steps to prevent them occurring or, if that is not possible, to mitigate them. Thus far Brexit has had limited impact on the industry in the short term, given the preparation and relocations already undertaken as part of contingency planning for a no-deal Brexit.

A number of domestic legislative measures were introduced as part of contingency planning to mitigate some potential financial services risks, such as the insurance run-off regime and various legislative provisions to facilitate the successful migration of our settlement system from the UK CREST settlement system to Euroclear Bank Belgium. The signed EU–UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement covers financial services in the same way that financial services are covered in the EU's other trade agreements with developed countries. In addition to the few financial services provisions included in the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, both sides agreed to establish a memorandum of understanding on structured regulatory co-operation on financial services. The memorandum will be an important measure to support continued co-operation between the EU and UK in financial services, given the integrated nature of our financial services systems.

To conclude on that, many of the negative issues we were concerned about with regard to financial services and Brexit have not yet developed. That is mostly due to the quality of planning put in place to deal with those risks. We have also had some gains in financial services across that period. In particular, I point to the success we have had with additional investment and employment from both Barclays and Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

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