Ms MaryRose McGovern:

The primary driver behind the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman (Amendment) Bill 2023 is the Supreme Court decision in the Zalewski v. Adjudication Officer and WRC, Ireland and the Attorney General case, which dates back to April 2021. The issue that arose was that the governing legislation of the ombudsman prescribes that complaints are investigated "otherwise than in public". This wording is pretty much identical to the wording in the governing legislation of the Workplace Complaints Commission and the Supreme Court took the view that this blanket prohibition on having hearings in public was contrary to the Constitution. The primary rationale behind the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman (Amendment) Bill 2023 is to ensure that it will be open to the ombudsman to have an oral hearing conducted in public, when the circumstances are appropriate.

In terms of the other aspect, where financial service providers are no longer operating within the jurisdiction, that has never presented a difficulty for complainants to make a complaint to the FSPO because of the manner in which the existing legislative provisions have been interpreted. However, we recognise there is a potential ambiguity in one of the provisions and in order to tie that away, there is another amendment in the published Bill that will copper-fasten what has been our interpretation of those legislative provisions to date.