Mr. Ger Deering:

We have very extensive powers, which is very good. I am not aware of another ombudsman with the same powers as the Irish Financial Services Ombudsman. Our findings are legally binding. We have significant powers of investigation and of requiring financial services providers to produce the evidence, and sanctions if they do not. We are happy to say that the Department of Finance has engaged very well with us. There are some new provisions in the legislation. The six-year rule has been discussed a good deal but, for example, there is also a provision in the legislation that our findings would be published. We would be very happy with that. We believe that would be the greatest step in terms of transparency. The idea would be that they would be published anonymised so one would know the financial services provider against which the complaint was made and would see our outcome but the complainant would have confidentiality.