Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Ó Laoghaire has outlined the contents of the Bill and its importance, and his own openness, as lead sponsor of the Bill, to take amendments from both witnesses and other colleagues across the political divide. I am glad that we are the stage of pre-legislative scrutiny, and I hope that this will proceed throughout the parliamentary process here and that it is not frustrated through the need for money messages or otherwise during its passage.

It is 13 years since the Law Reform Commission's report on multi-party action legislation. It is clear that we are not the only outlier in the European Union, but compared with our peers, we are an outlier in not providing this type of course of action to litigants. I was prompted to look into the issue because of the tracker mortgage scandal, where victim after victim was left to argue and wonder if they had another kind of course of redress through the courts whereby they were able to take on the Goliaths of the financial institutions to get them to address the difficulties and the challenges they faced after having lost so much money as a result of the tracker mortgage scandal. Their own personal assets were put on the line. In those circumstances many wondered if they could have looked at a class action, multi-party type of suit. When we scrutinised that issue, we found that the Law Reform Commission had indeed recommended this back in 2005.

I am delighted that Deputy Ó Laoghaire has taken the time to pen this legislation based on those recommendations at the time and that the Dáil has passed that legislation to this Stage. I look forward to hearing the contributions of the witnesses.