Mr. William Prasifka:

No, we do not seek any amendment to our legislation. To be very clear, we have been highlighting in cases before the Judiciary that there have been two separate lines of decisions from the High Court. Some decisions state quite clearly that the decision as to whether to hold an oral hearing falls within our jurisdiction as the ombudsman, and when we make a decision it can be set aside only for rather exceptional reasons. The second alternative view, which is also stated clearly, is that the decision to hold an oral hearing does not fall within our jurisdiction, and therefore it is something that potentially can be set aside for lesser reasons by the Judiciary. Our experience in the past 18 months, looking at just the number of cases, is that the first view, which is that the decision to hold an oral hearing is within our jurisdiction, is perhaps the more dominant view. Whatever the courts decide on this issue, it is something we as a statutory body can only comply with.