Linda Nelson Murray (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. Our paths have crossed a few times. I harp on about insurance issues. He is great in that sphere.

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill as I feel I have first-hand experience of the ombudsman's office. I am here to stand up for businesses and for people who feel aggrieved about financial services providers or their insurers. I was in a position five years ago, practically to the day, where I had to contact the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman's office out of utter desperation. Covid had just happened and our business was closed. Like everyone else, I did not know what to do. I immediately read the business interruption part of my policy to see if I was covered. We are a small business in Navan and we employ more than 20 people. It was affecting us all. Unfortunately for us, we still had to pay our high rent and our bills, so we were desperate. As far as I was concerned, our policy showed that we were covered, so I called the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman.

I felt my first phone call was very welcoming. I remember feeling safe. However, at this time, I was reading articles from the UK where its Financial Conduct Authority was bringing test cases through, which was not happening here. To my innocent mind, I thought this process with the ombudsman would last perhaps a few months. We did not have €1,000, never mind many thousands of euro, to pay legal fees to fight our case. Being able to work with and use the ombudsman's office was something we needed to be able to do and were glad to be able to avail of. We needed to fight for our business and all our employees. We needed to ensure that insurers were not just going to fob us off like they tried to do. As a side note, complaints to the ombudsman regarding insurance, as my colleague mentioned, rose by 26% between 2023 and 2024. We need to look at why so many complaints about insurance are coming in, with motor insurance being the highest.

Getting back to our case, the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman said we had a case. We were delighted. That process started in April 2020 and ended four years later. It took four years to get through the ombudsman. It would take me all day to express to the Minister of State the anxiety and distress that we experienced during those four years, as well as the other businesses that we were trying to help. As it turned out, the ombudsman used us as a test case. In other words, our case helped many businesses all around Ireland. I am delighted that it had that impact. No words I can use here today could vividly portray the anxiety we all felt. At each point when we thought we had won, there was an appeal. Even when we got to the High Court, there was an appeal. If I was to have brought the communication into this Chamber, I would have had to have brought in two Lever Arch files.

Given that experience, while we have the opportunity to discuss this Bill, here are my thoughts on the changes and the changes I think we should bring in. In order to bring a complaint to the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman, your business needs to a turnover of €3 million or less. We can consider that one fact. This threshold was set 22 years ago. How can we possibly be using turnover figures from that time? If a business in Ireland has a turnover of €3 million and it has to bring its case through the courts, for example, the High Court, its legal fees will be in the hundreds of thousands. On foot of that, will the owner actually bother? Probably not. You need to win the case for your employees and business, so what do you do? You have been unfairly treated by a financial provider and do not know what to do. You cannot bring it to the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman because your turnover is €3.1 million. Now is the time to increase the threshold to €5 million rather than waiting until 2026 or beyond.

The Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman' office needs many more staff. I welcome the changes in the Bill to provide for the appointment of additional persons to act as deputy ombudsmen.I note the former Minister, Senator McDowell's, point that they should be of similar minds and not, as we see in the High Court, different judges awarding different sums as injury awards.

I welcome the hiring of 35 additional staff last year and hope the waiting times for motorists, businesses and people bringing complaints to the ombudsman will be dramatically reduced.