Andrew Doyle (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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88. To ask the Minister for Finance if he will indicate the tools to avoid excessive speculation in commodity derivatives under the new Markets in Financial Instruments Directive and Regulation which he has described; if he will further indicate who the regulators here will be; and the commodity derivatives which will be affected here. [7397/14]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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On 14 January 2014, the European Parliament and the Council reached a provisional agreement on a revision of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II) and a new Markets in Financial Instruments Regulation (MiFIR). The Directive and Regulation are likely to enter into force sometime in the middle of 2014, with transposition into national law to follow within the period allowed for.

In Ireland the Central Bank is the national competent authority, although the Deputy should note there are no commodity exchanges in Ireland. 

MiFIR will provide powers to national competent authorities, with the guiding hand of the European Securities Markets Authority (ESMA), to establish and apply position limits in commodity derivative markets. This will help curb excessive speculation in commodity derivative markets and serve to reduce price volatility in the underlying commodity markets.

The ESMA will be centrally involved in co-ordinating the position limit regimes among regulators. ESMA will also draw up the technical standards which lay down the details of how the rules will work.  Each regulated market, MTF or OTF will have to publish publicly a weekly report with the aggregated positions held by each firm, according to instrument type and the category of entity. There is also a position reporting obligation to national competent authorities. 

Furthermore, subject to the final agreement between the co-legislators, competent authorities will have product intervention powers whereby they may prohibit or restrict the trading of financial instruments in markets, including commodity derivative markets, when threre is a threat to the orderly functioning and integrity of the market in question.