November 18, 2008
You’ll be familiar with the recent Financial Regulator decision to fine Quinn Insurance €3.25m and Sean Quinn personally the amount of €200,000.
In a very unexpected move, Quinn Insurance and Sean Quinn himself meekly rolled over and accepted their punishment with the fines being accepted, and Quinn resigning from the board of his own company.
Which has me very confused since the most explicit information I can find regarding what the wrongdoing actually was doesn’t get any more detailed than:
The regulator said it had “reasonable cause to suspect that breaches of regulatory requirements occurred in relation to Quinn Insurance”.
Only reasonable cause? No proof? Quinn Insurance and Sean Quinn accept a fine of €3.45m on the basis of merely a suspicion?
Why?
Particularly given past activities and challenges made by Quinn Direct Insurance in the face of a decision of the Financial Services Obudsman in April 2005. In that case, the Ombudsman directed (wrongly as it turned out) Quinn Direct to refund to all impacted customers a €25 administration charge levied by the company though they hadn’t informed clients that they would be liable for such a charge if they transferred a policy from one car to another.
I don’t know if the financial impact of this decision would have been worth as much as €3.45m to Quinn Direct at the time, but their immediate reaction to that decision was to challenge the Financial Ombudsman and take them to the Commercial Court.
But not this time
I can only say that I’m puzzled as to why Quinn have accepted this recent Financial Regulator decision without a whimper. Accepting this punishment seems to have called off the hounds with respects to the Financial Regulator, but it seems that the Office of Director of Corporate Enforcement could still be involved.
August 19, 2008
“We trust that they will be of great use and benefit to consumers in identifying and working through their commitments and responsibilities in terms of management companies”.
Ms. Fitzgerald also said:
“Rather than wait for the legislation to come through, we wanted to work immediately to provide consumers with as much information as possible to clearly communicate the scope of the commitment in which they engage when buying into a multi-unit development”.
So, we have an organisation, the fuckers* at the National Consumer Agency, who is becoming widely ridiculed for publishing pointless useless research rather than doing anything concrete and are now sticking their oar into the waters which is supposed to managed by the equally useless National Property Services Regulatory Authority (NPSRA).
Rather than doing serious and effective work in their own realm of consumer affairs, the fuckers* are now deciding that they want to do an equally useless and half arsed job in the area of property management companies.
And trust me, having read their new guide, it truly is a waste of time. This guide is intended to “supplement and enhance” a document they provided previously in December 2006, as well as being significantly similar to documentation provided by the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement. And all this documentation is being provided in advance of the NPSRA getting it’s full authority from the government, and presumably commissioning it’s own reports and producing it’s own version of all this same documentation.
Are you confused yet? You live in an apartment with a management company and a management agent, and you’ve got problems – which of these three regulators do you actually go to get help from?
- The National Consumer Agency – nope, they’re only providing guidance documents.
- The Office of Director of Corporate Enforcement – nope, as I’ve personally found, they won’t do anything.
- How about the National Property Service Regulatory Authority – nope, they don’t actually have any powers.
- My management company have set a service charge for the following year of 60% more than the previous year, with no extra services provided. How can they justify such fees, or are they just ripping us off?
- My management company are taking our service charges and paying the management agent who’re not actually providing the services they’re contracted to provide. What can I do to get my value for money?
- The developer of my apartment complex won’t hand over the complex to the residents, even though the complex has been finished for two years? I know they still own two apartments in order to stay on the management company. How can we get control moved to the residents?
- The NCA paperwork says that boards of a management company shouldn’t have a management structure set to favour the development at the expense of the residents. Yet, most of them are set up that way. Why don’t these useless regulators do something to prevent that instead of pussy-footing around the issues by producing reams of documentation.
- Why are the fuckers* endorsing the Irish Home Builders Association Code of Practice for Management Companies which I’ve discussed here before. This code of practice only applies to any management companies created after September 2008. Any management companies that exist at the moment are not subject to these so for most people they’re not relevant at all. And since there’s shag all being built at the moment, they won’t apply to anyone in the future either.
There we have three useless regulators and not a bit of help for the poor unfortunate consumer. What a waste of our money!
January 13, 2008
The new complaints mechanism is designed to ensure that the freedom of the press is never abused, and that the public interest is always served. These are the main principles of independent press regulation all around the world.
The site itself is a bit confusing as there are separate links for the Press Council as opposed to the Press Ombudsman. Apparently, any complaints go to the Press Ombudsman first who will “attempt to resolve the matter by making direct contact with the editor of the publication concerned”. This sounds horribly like the way our useless NCA and ODCE try to “work with” offenders rather than actually enforce the law.
Any complaints where “conciliation” is not possible can either be determined by the Ombudsman, or escalated to the Press Council.
Obviously, given the activities of Charlie Weston and my interest in other newspaper stories in the past year, I was interested to see what, if anything, this further extra regulator would be useful for, or would actually be able to do.
In the case of Mr.Weston, it seems as he may possibly have contravened (though not specifically according to the letter of the text) Principle 3 of the Code of Practice.
Principle 3 − Fairness and Honesty3.1 Newspapers and periodicals shall strive at all times for fairness and honesty in the procuring and publishing of news and information.
3.2 Publications shall not obtain information, photographs or other material through misrepresentation or subterfuge, unless justified by the public interest.
In the case of the Richard Delevan article (which may or may not have gotten him fired), I don’t believe there is anything within the Code of Practice under which Mr.Ken McDonald could legitimately have complained. Possibly, Principle 5 - Privacy could have been used, however, subsection 5.2 states that:
Readers are entitled to have news and comment presented with respect for the privacy and sensibilities of individuals. However, the right to privacy should not prevent publication of matters of public record or in the public interest.
As far as I know, everything reported by Mr.Delevan had already been reported in the “press” previously, and there had been no previous complaints about this.
However, the sacking of Mr.Delevan, and the Irish Times articles referred to in my most recent “press” post, would both possibly fall foul of Princile 2 - Distinguishing Fact and Comment. Under subsection2.2, it states that:
Readers are entitled to expect that the content of a publication reflects the best judgement of editors and writers and has not been inappropriately influenced by undisclosed interests. Where relevant, any significant financial interest of an organisation should be disclosed. Writers should disclose significant potential conflicts of interest to their editor. (My bolded italics).
Finally, there are a number of journalists who’s work I’m familiar with who appear to make up unattributed quotes (”We spoke to one mother of six children”) and comments in order to justify an angle they’re trying to personally take in articles. It will be interesting to see if these journalists to continue to do so – especially as this activity would appear to contravene Principle 2 also, subsection 2.1
Comment, conjecture, rumour and unconfirmed reports shall not be reported as if they were fact, but newspapers and periodicals are entitled to advocate strongly their own views on topics.
As time goes on, it will be interesting if journalist behaviour changes, and if it doesn’t, what the Press Ombudsman and the Press Council will do about any complaints submitted to them. If you have a complaint to make, you should go here. Oh, sorry, you should go here actually.
Remember, this doesn’t work retrospectively – only for articles published after January 1, 2008.
January 7, 2008
Yet, complaints against Property Management Companies, such as the one I submitted about my own during the year, have increased 146%.
So, despite the fact that complaints are rising, this useless government agency is doing even less than last year, and is still trying to make itself look good.
November 21, 2007
Back in September, I wrote about how the National Consumer Agency and the Office of Director of Corporate Enforcement were taking to writing to PFO letters to this Irish consumers coming to them for help.
Some time ago, I found a further example of such a letter from the NCA sent to Ach go háirithe after a complaint about drinks pricing in a Dublin bar.
September 25, 2007
An interesting link today via Damien Mulley to Despod’s Photo and Comment Blog where there’s some pretty damning evidence of the uselessness of the National Consumer Agency.
First of all, how many employees are there in the NCA? And they still can only come up with a pre-written bog-standard generic unhelpful PFO e-mail reply to a complaint?
In almost a carbon copy of the response I received from the similarly useless Office of Director of Corporate Enforcement the NCA say that they wish to “work with” retailers.
What I don’t get is the fact that in this complaint to the NCA, and in my complaint to the ODCE, there is documented proof that laws, regulations, whatever have been broken by the companies concerned. When I get a speeding ticket, can the Gardai hold off giving me a speeding ticket and points to “work with me” and ensure I don’t speed again?
Can anyone tell me who’s actually working with the consumers to actually have their rights enforced if the NCA and the ODCE are working with retailers and businesses and not actually bringing the law to bear?
