Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I believe 202 out of 2,983 complaints were upheld, which is 7%. The figure seems to be getting smaller. There could be different reasons. Perhaps our financial institutions behave wonderfully or perhaps, as the Financial Services Ombudsman's report seems to indicate, it wants the financial institutions engaging with the complaining customer at an earlier stage. Therefore, they are not coming across the Financial Services Ombudsman's desk and it does not deal with them.

One of the significant changes is that if three complaints are upheld against a particular financial institution, the Financial Services Ombudsman gets to publish that. Avoiding publication may well be an incentive for banks to get the matter dealt with. Is it possible that the publication of offending institutions is being distorted by people coming into negotiations or mediation earlier? Should we review the publication of inappropriate behaviour? If a bank mis-sells a product to me or there is some error with the system and I do not get to hear about a customer with the same product as mine complaining to the Financial Services Ombudsman about it and because it cannot force a precedent and a legal ruling on it, that difficulty will continue for me because I may not be aware of it if the Central Bank does not take any action. Do we need to review the need for three offences leading to publication?