Proving that you were mis-sold a financial product is not easy, it emerged at last week's meeting of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service.
The financial services ombudsman, Joe Meade, cannot investigate incidents that occurred more than six years prior to the date of the complaint, he told the committee. This means that almost all mis-selling complaints from endowment mortgage customers, who bought their policies in the late 1980s and early 1990s, fall outside his remit.
Even if the time limits did not apply, financial institutions here, unlike their UK counterparts, were not obliged to keep records on how products were sold in the early 1990s, making it difficult for consumers to prove they were mis-sold any financial product dating back more than a few years.
Financial institutions were not required to conduct fact-finding reports on customers' financial circumstances or say in writing why they recommended a particular product.
These regulations only came in for intermediaries in 2001 and they will only apply to all regulated financial service providers when the Irish Financial Services Regulatory Authority's consumer protection code comes into effect in July this year.
The ombudsman will look at any documents such as contracts and sales brochures to see if guarantees were made. If the endowment policy matures and any written guarantee that it would clear the mortgage is not honoured, he will uphold complaints on the grounds of breach of contract. But so far he has encountered no such written guarantees.
"Word of mouth or anecdotal evidence will not be sufficient," says Meade.
When the legislation governing the ombudsman scheme was drawn up, it was felt that six years was a reasonable window of time for consumers to make complaints, Meade explains. "It's up to the legislators to decide if it needs to be changed."
Although any change to the time limits won't help people who bought endowment policies, pensions or any other life assurance or investment policy before the fact-finding regulations came in, it could help protect people who are buying long-term financial products now but don't realise something is amiss until more than six years into the life of the policy.
Some pensions problems are not subject to the six-year rule. The pensions ombudsman, Paul Kenny, will deal with complaints made within three years of the date that the person became aware - "or ought to have been aware" - of the problem, provided the matter giving rise to the complaint did not take place before April 1996.
The pensions ombudsman accepts complaints relating to the maladministration of schemes and disputes of fact or law. This can include common problems such as unnecessary delay on receiving benefits, wrong information being issued, incorrect payments and neglect. But he does not handle mis-selling complaints, which must be made to the financial ombudsman. All cases taken to the financial ombudsman's office are looked at on their individual merits, Meade says, and the regulator's new code of practice, combined with a strengthening of internal complaints procedures at financial institutions and better consumer awareness, should result in a lower volume of complaints.
But no legislation can protect people against their own recklessness or greed in cases where they ignore sound advice in favour of making a quick buck, he believes.
