S.I. No. 85 of 2003

Regulations

entitled

European Communities (Deposit Guarantee Schemes) Regulations 2003

I, Charlie McCreevy, Minister for Finance, in exercise of the powers conferred on me by section 3 of the European Communities Act 1972 ( No. 27 of 1972 ) and for the purposes of giving further effect to Council Directive 94/19/EC of 1994¹ , hereby make the following regulations:

1.         These Regulations may be cited as the European Communities (Deposit Guarantee Schemes) Regulations 2003.

2.         These Regulations shall come into operation on 5 March, 2003.

3.         The European Communities (Deposit Guarantee Schemes) Regulations 1995 ( S.I. No. 168 of 1995 ) are amended in Regulation 5 by substituting the following for paragraph (2):

           “(2)     The amount of a deposit maintained by a credit institution authorised by the Bank under these Regulations shall, subject to paragraph (5), be 0.2 per cent of total deposits, including deposits on current accounts but excluding --

(a)        interbank deposits,

(b)        negotiable certificates of deposits,

(c)        debt securities issued by the same institution,

(d)        liabilities arising out of own acceptances, and

(e)        promissory notes,

denominated in euro or any other currency and issued or held at offices in Member States of the credit institution, but shall not be less than €25,400.”.

Explanatory Note

(This note is not part of the instrument and does not purport to be a legal interpretation)

This amendment is required to clarify that commercial paper issued shall not constitute part of the deposit base on which a credit institution’s deposit with the Central Bank of Ireland, is calculated.

The amounts referred to throughout are in euro, albeit that the European Communities (Deposit Guarantee Schemes) Regulations 1995, which are being amended by the current instrument, refer to “ecu”. This is because Article 2 of Regulation (EC) No. 1103/97, of 17 June 1997, effectively replaced all references to the “ecu”, in any legal instrument (including legislative and statutory provisions), with a reference to the euro, at a rate of one euro to one ecu.

The amendment also re-inserts the words “in any currency” which were inadvertently omitted from the European Communities (Deposit Guarantee Schemes) Regulations 2002. These words appeared in the original 1995 Regulations and are necessary because the amount of the deposit to be maintained by a credit institution is determined by the amount of deposits in any currency, not only those denominated in euro.

¹ O.J. No. L135, 31.5.1994, p.5