Mr. Raymond O'Rourke:

I do not want to name the Deputy but on 17 February a parliamentary question was asked as to whether the EU directive allowing for class-action lawsuits was still scheduled to be transposed into Irish law. I highlight this because the two things are being mixed together. The Law Society has its views on multiparty actions, as does the Deputy. I am a lawyer and that is great. We are speaking about a particular directive that introduces the right for consumers to take representative actions.

I will highlight to the Deputy the kind of action I would be hoping to do. Last weekend Aer Lingus obviously had some difficulties at the airport. That is covered under EU legislation and maybe the airline will compensate people in the correct way, but there could be people who will not be compensated correctly. That is something I would hope a certain number of consumers would come forward about and there would be a representative action. I am aware the issue is that such an action could go the High Court, so you are immediately into a very difficult area. Possibly, however, even just taking representative action involving so many consumers or whatever would make the trader, in this case Aer Lingus, negotiate because it does not want to go down this route and will instead put its hands up and say "Yes". That, in a way, is what we want to do.

There will be some cases that may go to the High Court if they are for €75,000 or more. The Deputy knows himself how tedious and long that can be and all the documentation involved, so it is not a quick process. We would have preferred, even with the directive or whatever, something at a lower level. In some member states this is done via administrative courts. Parties can go to an administrative court and have a little ruling and then they go to the other court about compensation or whatever. However, we are were where we are and that is why we would like the directive to be transposed and in line with that. Multiparty actions might help consumers in the long run but-----