Mr. Ger Deering:

If we received a complaint in that area, if it had a tracker element, it would sit into the tracker. There are other commercial loans there as well that would be looked at. The committee will be aware that the consumer protection Act of 2015 took care of the situation where restructuring or loans were sold on. There could have been a problem where a regulated entity sold a loan to a non-regulated entity. That would have taken them out of our reach to deal with complaints. However, the consumer protection Act of 2015 makes sure that the person either provides a credit intermediary who is regulated or that the firm it has gone to is regulated. In a situation like that, we can still deal with complaints if it has been moved to another entity.

In some instances we find that we have two complaints. We may have a complaint where something happened before it was passed on. That would be against the originating financial service provider. Then something has happened with the new entity that it has been sold to. We can deal with those situations. Simply because something transfers from one to another would not prohibit us. However, we would need a complaint from the person concerned. I know the Chairman is interested in this area. An important point is that we can take complaints from businesses as well, as long as the turnover is less than €3 million. Sometimes there is an impression that the Financial Services Ombudsman can only deal with individuals. We do deal with individuals and with small businesses, clubs and organisations as well.