Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 2:

In page 4, to delete lines 8 to 12 and substitute the following:

“ “(b) Occurred either—(i) 6 years from the date of the act or conduct giving rise to the complaint or reference, or

(ii) 3 years from the date on which the person making the complaint first became aware of the said act or conduct, but only where the complaint is against financial services providers of financial products of a duration of greater than 6 years,

whichever date is the latter, or”.”.

Again, I re-emphasise what I said earlier on. The Government has its own piece of legislation to merge the Financial Services Ombudsman and the Pensions Ombudsman and has accepted that this issue of the six-year rule will be part of that legislation. It is important to try to mirror what is in both pieces of legislation in order that there is a seamless provision of services from the Financial Services Ombudsman and a clarity to how that would operate. We have looked at the Government's heads of Bill and listened to what came out of the pre-legislative scrutiny. We have proposed an amendment based on that.

This is one of the most important sections of the Bill. It is the core area and the cause of the urgency to have this legislation enshrined into law. The original proposal based on the FLAC report was to move to a two-year rule, which is two years from the date on which a consumer becomes aware of the act or deed. As we speak, there are families across the State for whom this is a very real and pressing issue. As I mentioned, I published this Bill back in September 2014. We are two and a half years on since the publication of this Bill. Even now, I am personally engaged with the Central Bank of Ireland on what I believe is another payment protection insurance scandal that has taken place, with thousands of customers of certain different institutions having been mis-sold products who did not originally come under the scope of the Central Bank's investigation. There are potentially thousands of people who fall into this bracket. As I mentioned, I had a conversation about this just yesterday and we have had a number of individuals contacting us just this week on this key area.

I know that there is cross-party support with regard to dealing with this issue. I also want to note that Deputy McGrath has legislation on this issue that also proposes removing the block of the six-year rule. The amendment today changes it from two years to three years, which is in line with what was suggested by both Deputy McGrath and the Minister, Deputy Noonan. The three-year rule would apply to consumers who otherwise would be excluded by the six-year rule. I have also taken steps in this amendment to address concerns about other aspects of the section. I have inserted the term "products of duration of greater than 6 years" to make sure that renewable products that have a life but not necessarily a term of six years are eligible for the new time limits. I have also decided not to use the Government's wording of "ought to have known". We discussed this during the pre-legislative scrutiny. I feel that that terminology included in the legislation would only act in favour of the banks and to the detriment of the consumer.

I believe that this amendment is in line with what the Government's heads of Bill outlined. I note that the Government has adopted a different approach because it is coming from a different legal basis. There are some significant differences, particularly with regard to "ought to have known", but I see no reason why that needs to be included. I think that would provide a loophole for financial institutions to take cases against individuals and against the Financial Services Ombudsman by saying that an individual should have known that the tracker mortgage issue was in the public domain and so on, which would therefore continue to see people locked out of the system.