Mr. William Prasifka:

As I indicated previously, we are familiar with the UK financial ombudsman service. We have a very good relationship with it and participate in many exchanges and activities with it. As such I am very familiar with its methodologies. It operates completely differently than we do. It has a high degree of informality and is not subject to any judicial review in the same way as the Irish Financial Services Ombudsman. It does not operate according to the same degree of legal formality. We largely apply legal principles and stray from those, as we are entitled to do under our legislation, only where we believe there is substantial reason to do so and are able to clearly set that out in a transparent way. The British office operates a high level of informal decision-making whereas our decision-making is very formal. There appears to be an alignment of our methodologies in many cases which the financial institutions are taking on board, which we do not see in the UK. For example, it has been dealing with the payment protection insurance issue for some time. I find it difficult to understand why, when the financial institutions in Britain know what the outcome will be, they are not settling their cases. The one thing I have learned from being an ombudsman is that much is dependent on the culture and legal system of each jurisdiction. It is fair to say that the way in which we do things and the outcome is very different in Ireland than it is in the UK.