Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Some context and background is appropriate to where these amendments are being placed.

Section 6 is an important part of the Bill that provides for duties and standards to support the introduction of the accountability element of the Bill but, most importantly, it provides for the balances that are required to ensure the robustness of the provisions from a constitutional perspective as we have discussed in some detail already.

Section 53B imposes a legal duty on those individuals who are performing pre-approval control functions in firms that are subject to the senior executive accountability regime who have inherent or allocated responsibility for the aspects of the affairs of a regulated firm under regulations to be made by the bank under the power provided for in section 3 of the Bill. Those persons will have a duty of responsibility to ensure that they take any steps reasonable in the circumstances to secure that the business of the areas of the firm for which they have responsibility is conducted to avoid contravention or a continuation of a contravention by the firm of its obligations under financial services.

The common conduct standards is an important part of that. It indicates the behaviours expected of those working in the financial services sector and sets out an illustrative, but non-exhaustive, list of the behaviours in the Bill for clarity. They are clearly there.

The additional conduct standards are aimed at those in senior roles for those people who may exercise a significant influence on a firm's affairs. The aims of the provisions of section 6 are to establish a set of standards with which individuals in financial services organisations must comply. The purpose of this is to give the Central Bank additional powers to ensure that regulated financial service providers operate in an appropriate way. The changes in law here are intended to introduce standards, breaches of which have significant consequences. Therefore, any changes need to refer directly to the breaches of financial services law and not anything else. Based on those drafting concerns, I cannot accept the amendments.