Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael)

-----and to the Garda Commissioner about the issue in order to have it investigated. I understand there is also a complaints commission to identify the issue and respond to it because the Deputy has made serious charges in the House.

I thank the Deputy for raising this important issue. I have been informed by departmental officials that the issue of such repossessions has not been brought to the attention of the Department of Finance. I assume the Deputy is referring to hire purchase agreements.

The Central Bank has advised that there are no legislative requirements that oblige hire purchase providers to seek an authorisation from the bank for the provision of hire purchase agreements for consumers and-or small businesses. Notwithstanding this, hire purchase providers are required to comply with the relevant provisions of the Consumer Credit Act 1995 when providing hire purchase agreements for consumers acting outside their business. In the Consumer Credit Act 1995 the hire purchase company is referred to as the owner. The Act contains a number of protections for what are referred to in the Act as the hirer of the goods. The Act defines the "hirer" as a consumer who takes, intends to take or has taken goods from an owner under a hire purchase agreement in return for periodic payments. However, the protections under the Act do not apply to small businesses.

In the case of small and medium enterprises, where hire purchase is provided by a bank under its banking licence, the bank is required to comply with the Central Bank's code of conduct for business lending to small and medium enterprises. The section on financial difficulties in the code requires firms to have in place procedures for the handling of arrears cases, to give the borrower reasonable time to solve an arrears problem and to endeavour to agree an approach to assist the borrower to solve an arrears problem. This section has recently been revised and now contains more detailed requirements. The revised requirements will be effective from 1 January 2012 and a copy is available on the Central Bank's website at www.centralbank.ie.

Credit intermediaries engaged in the provision of hire purchase agreements are required to seek authorisation under the Consumer Credit Act 1995 for the provision of such agreements for consumers. The National Consumer Agency is responsible for the authorisation of credit intermediaries.

In some instances, a person who is dissatisfied with his or her treatment by a hire purchase company can make a complaint to the Financial Services Ombudsman. To be eligible to make a complaint, the person has to be considered a consumer for the purposes of making a complaint to the ombudsman. The people who come within this definition include all personal customers acting outside their trade, business or profession; limited companies with a turnover of €3 million or less, and unincorporated bodies, partnerships and trusts. The remit of the Financial Services Ombudsman was extended to include complaints in relation to the providers of hire purchase agreements under Regulation 2 of the Central Bank Act 1942 (Financial Services Ombudsman) Regulations 2005.

The Financial Services Ombudsman is a statutory officer who deals independently with complaints from consumers about their individual dealings with financial service providers that have not been resolved by the providers after they have been through the internal complaints resolution system. It is a free service to the complainant. Compensation up to €250,000 can be awarded and decisions are binding, subject to appeal to the High Court.

Turning from the legislative provisions in relation to hire purchase agreements, I encourage businesses to shop around for the most suitable way of finding finance for new plant and machinery. I will send the rest of the reply to the Deputy

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