Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 21 February 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality

General Scheme of the Multi-Party Actions Bill 2017: Discussion

9:00 am

Photo of Jack ChambersJack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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To play the devil's advocate - I want to be clear I support Deputy Ó Laoghaire's legislation - we received a submission from Christopher Hodges, professor of justice systems at the University of Oxford. Professor Hodges has said that collective litigation is an outdated mechanism. He refers to 2018 research. The study collected many case studies on the different collective redress mechanism from across the EU and the results were evaluated against objective criteria. The study found that new technology mechanisms of regulatory redress and consumer ombudsmen were clearly better than the old technology mechanism of collective litigation. Have any of the witnesses explored that research? Maybe they want to comment on it.