Mr. Ger Deering:

Indeed. Changes have been made and there is evidence to that effect. The Central Bank looked at cases where people had been given time to repay their debt. What we look at in that process, if we receive a complaint, is how the bank has treated the customer and whether it has applied the various elements of the code.

The Deputy also asked if we met the banks collectively. In our case, we do because we are in a different position and prefer to meet them collectively rather than individually. We mainly meet the people who deal with complaints. For example, we are meeting them tomorrow through the Banking and Payments Federation. We talk to them about the level of engagement and find that some financial institutions are better than others at engaging. Some engage with us and are anxious to solve problems, while others are not and simply push us all the tiime to the limits of our powers. The difficulty in that regard is that it takes much longer to complete the process. If a bank approaches a complaint in a legalistic way, it will take a lot longer to deal with it. We have to investigate and adjudicate it, which takes a lot of time.

Last year we established a new mediation process. Many complainants much prefer to mediate their complaint rather than go through an investigation and adjudication process. We manage to resolve 75% of complaints, but not all providers are engaging. No later than tomorrow, I will be talking to providers about the need to engage fully in the process and the consequences of not doing so.