Key findings of the Mutual Evaluation of Ireland

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has completed an assessment of the implementation of its anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing standards in Ireland. Among its major findings were:

• Ireland has a sound legal framework in place to combat money laundering, although the number of convictions for money laundering is somewhat low.
• Recent Irish legislation on combating terrorist financing is, on the whole, comprehensive; its effectiveness remains to be tested however.
• Customer identification requirements are in place for financial institutions; however these measures should be enhanced through the introduction of more comprehensive due diligence requirements.
• As regards relevant non-financial businesses and professions; for example accountants or real estate agents, certain measures have been put in place, but these need to be extended.
• Preventive measures could be improved by providing regulatory authorities with the power to apply an increased range of administrative sanctions directly for breaches of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing obligations.

Click here to download the full report, (1Mb, pdf, English) or the summary only (223Kb, pdf, English).

Ireland is the sixth country to be examined in the FATF’s third series of mutual evaluations of its members.

For further information, journalists are invited to contact Helen Fisher, OECD Media Relations (tel.: +33 1 45 24 80 97 or helen.fisher@oecd.org) or the FATF Secretariat, 2, rue André-Pascal, 75775 Paris Cedex 16 (tel: +33 1 45 24 79 45, fax: +33 1 44 30 61 37 or email: contact@fatf-gafi.org).