Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)

The reason for including a definition that "barrister" means a practising barrister, and "solicitor" means a practising solicitor, is to clarify that the persons intended to be captured in the relevant provisions of the Bill are persons actually practising in their respective professions. For instance, I have a practising certificate but I am not a practising solicitor at the moment. In effect, I get an exemption from such a certificate because I am not practising. It would be somewhat unusual to capture somebody like me, but there could be other cases where people would be qualified as solicitors but may not necessarily be practising as such. It is important to make that distinction.

The amendment to section 40 deals with reliance on a relevant third party to carry out customer due diligence or to replace the references to the Law Society in subsections (1)()(iv) and (vi) with "solicitor". The reason for this is that the current reference to a member of the Law Society would have the effect of including persons who are members, but not practising solicitors, and persons who could be relied upon under the third party provisions. The appropriate and correct reference in these cases for a person who can be relied upon for third party purposes is to be a solicitor.