Mr. Se?n Murphy:

By way of information, the consumer rights Bill that is going through at present is advocating for a three-year limitation period for the initiation of summary prosecutions. We are making the point here because obviously this is a complex sector, as we have said, with many links in the chain and many stakeholders involved.

I have no doubt there will be challenges in gathering evidence as there always are to get to a criminal standard. Also, we are reliant upon an individual making a complaint with respect to having been under either the receiving end of a breach or identifying the fact that there is a breach of the UTPs and the timing as to when he or she would actually come to the office. It can be the case where somebody discovers that there is a breach and either does not realise that it is a breach or does not come forward straight away with it. Time passes and by the time that then gets to the office, the clock has already started running. In addition, there also are other limitation periods that provide for complexity and we believe that, given our experience on this, it would be best if the timeframe was expanded to three years.