Our current domestic regime has evolved piecemeal over many years in response to particular concerns and without any relevant EU standards to refer to. We now need to be prepared – in light of the implementation of this major piece of European legislation – to re-examine those elements of the existing domestic framework.
Our approach will be informed by the principals included in the Taoiseach’s strategy for the international financial services sector, namely the need to carefully re-examine the case for domestic standards which exceed EU requirements, in terms of establishing that they are in the public interest. We are prepared to retain additional domestic standards if we believe the public interest test is met.