Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The briefing note also makes the point, as the committee will have heard, that complainants who intend going to court anyway would use it as a kind of pipe opener free of charge to see where the land lies before they proceed to the courts. One might get a flood of complaints where the intention of the complainant was never to conclude them within the ambit of the ombudsman's powers but to use them as a kind of introductory procedure on the way to court. Again, that would act as an obstacle to the operation of the powers, as we intend them, vested in the ombudsman. There are a couple of sub-routes there as well. It is the kind of thing that we will need to tease out to see where the balance of advantage lies. I want it to operate in the interest of consumers that they have low cost or no cost access to a complaints procedure to the Financial Services Ombudsman or the Pensions Ombudsman, and that there are not other heads the consequences of which might be to obstruct that access in one way or another.