Ms MaryRose McGovern:

In order to understand the context of that, I refer back to 2015, when a number of loans that were categorised as "non-performing" in accordance with EU requirements were sold by the existing banks to special purpose vehicles. At the time, in order to protect the consumers of those loans, the Government introduced the Consumer Protection (Regulation of Credit Servicing Firms) Act 2018 to ensure people were protected in the day-to-day communications they receive. However, a small gap was left but that was resolved at the beginning of 2019. Since January 2019, anybody who has a loan, whatever the nature of the loan owner, can make a complaint. For the last six years or so, anybody can make a complaint. For conduct that occurred before 2019, there is probably a small number of people who are impacted by the fact that the legislation or gap was not closed until 2019. The Department of Finance is looking at that to see whether further legislative amendment can fix it.