Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I would appreciate it if we could return to this on Report Stage. I am not sure if the council has made recommendations. Indeed, there are two different councils. There must be an awareness in the Government that the number of personnel will have to be increased. The six-year rule and its retrospective element allows for potentially 3,000 or more applications to be submitted immediately. My office is inundated with calls from people who are waiting for this legislation or my legislation to pass so they can make their complaints. The FSO will not be able to deal with the potential tsunami of complaints that will arrive after this legislation if we do not increase its staff. It will be a bad experience for consumers if they cannot access the FSO, or the new office after the enactment of the legislation, in a timely manner.

I ask the Minister of State to refer back to us with an indication of the type of resources that will be applied to this new office. It is fine to merge the two offices under the legislation, but if additional demand will be created for those two offices we need to know whether there will be efficiencies in that regard. If there is duplication between the 37 and six staff, there might be a number of personnel savings in that regard but they and others should be redeployed to dealing with consumers.