Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)
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Question 9: To ask the Minister for Finance the additional measures he intends to take to deal with the problem of money laundering in view of the concerns expressed regarding the adequacy of existing safeguards expressed in the third mutual evaluation report on Ireland produced by the financial action task force; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [12376/06]

Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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The financial action task force, FATF, recently published the report of its evaluation of Ireland's measures to combat money laundering and financing of terrorism. Ireland is one of seven countries evaluated to date in the FATF third round of mutual evaluations. Its overall ratings are comparable to those obtained by the other countries evaluated. The revised FATF money laundering recommendations of 2003, which are the standard against which Ireland's compliance was assessed, have been embodied in the third EU money laundering directive, which came into force in December 2005 with a transposition deadline of December 2007.

Many of the FATF recommendations on which Ireland was assessed as either partially compliant or non-compliant will be addressed in the transposition into Irish law of the third EU money laundering directive. These include additional measures on customer due diligence, measures relating to the identification of foreign politically exposed persons, the strengthening of the sanctions for breaches of money laundering rules and the regulation of non-financial entities.

On publication of the FATF report, my colleague, the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform and I jointly undertook to examine its recommendations thoroughly and gave a commitment to further strengthen Ireland's anti-money laundering mechanisms. The process of reviewing and updating the Irish legal framework to meet both our domestic needs and international obligations is already under way. Ireland opted to be evaluated early in the third round of mutual evaluations because this would be of considerable assistance in planning the transposition of the third EU money laundering directive into Irish law.