Mr. Kieran Grace:

The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, CCPC, regularly updates its guidelines on its website, particularly around Christmas time, extolling the virtues of using a voucher as quickly as possible because it is unsecured credit. Most people use them fairly quickly but, if they are not used within a certain period, the chances of a consumer remembering them diminishes and it is almost guaranteed that it will be months and months before they are used, if they ever are. There is a cyclical hump of usage and then very small usage thereafter. That is where the fees issue comes in. After 18 months, a consumer goes to use it and finds it has half the value he or she thought it had.