Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent)
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177. To ask the Minister for Finance the organisation that will be publishing the register of financial vehicle corporations, FVCs, including special purpose vehicles, SPVs, and their ultimate beneficiary owners in view of the imminent transposition into law of the Fourth Anti-Money Laundering Directive, AMLD4 on 26 June 2017; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [24086/17]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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Article 30 of the 4th Anti-Money Laundering Directive (4AMLD) requires Member States  to ensure that corporate and other legal entities incorporated within their territory  obtain and hold adequate, accurate and current information on their beneficial ownership, including details of the beneficial interests held. It also requires the above mentioned entities to transmit their beneficial ownership information to a central register.

The requirement for corporate and other legal entities to hold their beneficial ownership information on a company register has been provided for through  the European Union (Anti-Money Laundering: Beneficial Ownership of Corporate Entities) Regulations 2016 -SI 560/2016.

Work is ongoing in relation to the preparation of a further statutory instrument (SI) to appoint a Registrar of Beneficial Ownership of Companies and Industrial and Provident Societies who will be responsible for the establishment and maintenance of the beneficial ownership register in respect of those particular corporate entities.

The role of Registrar of Beneficial Ownership will be assigned as a separate legal responsibility to the Registrar of Companies. 

Discussions are continuing at EU level in relation to an amending proposal to the 4AMLD - known as 5AMLD - to determine what level of access should be provided to the centralised register. Pending the outcome of those discussions it is proposed to initially limit access to the register to the State AML competent authorities and the Financial Intelligence Unit of the Gardaí.  As soon as the 5AMLD is finalised, the SI will be further adapted to reflect the agreement at EU level.

Finally, you should note that as FVCs and SPVs are Irish registered corporate vehicles, S.I. 560 applies to them, as will the future requirement to file this beneficial ownership information to the above mentioned central register.