Mr. Ger Deering:

I will make a general point on that and will then ask my colleague Mary Rose McGovern to comment in more detail.

The legislative changes have been an improvement in that many people now can bring a complaint to us particularly on a long-term financial service who could not do that before. The difficulty is that many people think that the limit is gone entirely, whereas the six years still applies in certain respects and a three-year date of knowledge, and the discretion. I am not suggesting that the six year rule was good but it was more straightforward as a person knew whether he or she was in or out. We now spend much more time trying to explain and deal with people and challenges from providers as to whether a complaint is in or out. Our preference at the time would have been a simpler approach of no time limit. I accept that the Attorney General and other people had issues with that. We constantly deal with complaints and files. We have many files now where we spend more time dealing with the jurisdiction than with the substantive issue: we would have the substantive issue dealt with.

Back in 2015 and 2016, when we did the strategic and operational review, the people who were most angry with us at the time were people who could not get in or have their complaint dealt with. That has moved on now. When we were doing dispute resolution and mediation we do not go in but ask the providers not to argue about jurisdiction because this is a voluntary process. In general, they do engage. Now we have people who have been through that process and in our place for months where we have to turn around and say to them that we cannot investigate and adjudicate their complaint. We find that they are still very angry.