Mr. Peter Boland:

Yes. I will get to that. We are talking about things that will have an impact immediately. In the longer term, there is definitely a case for a separate body to oversee all of the financial sector in terms of consumer advocacy. I am not the first to bring that to the table; that has been mentioned regularly. We are all involved in small businesses and small enterprises and we are not great fans of additional oversight and bureaucracy. However, we cannot understand how the Central Bank can have that prudential role and a consumer protection role at the same time. They are mutually exclusive.

Regarding the lack of support, I think three of us who are here today were at that meeting with the Minister. We were told there was a lack of support for the proposal. It was not clarified on what basis that support was lacking, but we were told there was a lack of support. We were very disappointed by that because everything we had read from the cost of insurance working group would have suggested that everyone was gung ho on the idea and that it was going forward. However, it seems to have been parked for now and we would be very anxious to get it back in place. Regarding costs, it had already been agreed by Insurance Ireland that it would fund that unit, so the cost to the taxpayer would have been negligible.

As we understand it, and according to my legal contact last night, we can find only one case of a prosecution under section 25. Regarding section 26, I know there are numbers in the cost of insurance working group report. Up to this year, I think, it has been very low, certainly in the low teens, as I understand it, but we have seen an acceleration in the number of cases being dismissed under section 26 in recent months, and there have been headlines about that in the newspapers. The one thing we cannot get over is that someone who has been found by the court to make a misleading or exaggerated claim - and often that is putting it politely - is then able to walk out of court scot-free, with no consequences, and in a position to do something similar again some time down the road.