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

The principles of natural justice would provide that the financial services firms should have a reasonable right to defend themselves. It follows from this that we cannot have an unlimited time limit. That would not be reasonable for the financial services firms which are putting a defence in place. The reason for the form of words that we have included in the Government legislation is that it is the form of words in the UK legislation. In Australia, which would be a similar common law country, the financial service ombudsman's records are kept for six years under the consumer protection code. It is hard to go back beyond the legal requirements to preserve records.

We can work on the basis that the amendment proposed by Deputy Doherty is acceptable to me, but there are outstanding issues. Part of the outstanding issues are matters that I do not think there will be difficulty in reaching agreement on, taking into account the comments made by Deputy Doherty, having read the Bill as published yesterday. I think we will be able to accommodate those. There is a real issue around the "might reasonably have known" point. We need some cut-off, whether it is this form of words or through a different legal form of words. I will commit to my officials being available to Deputy Doherty and his advisers to see if agreement can be reached. While we are proceeding very rapidly at this point, this is a potential sticking point. There are real issues here and we will see what comes from the engagement with officials.

Otherwise, I am happy to proceed.