The Travellers' Protection Fund is used to make good losses or liabilities sustained by eligible customers of licensed tour operators or travel agents to the extent that the bonds are inadequate to meet such losses or liabilities.
In 2017, the IAA (formerly the Commision for Aviation Regulation) initiated work to review both the bonding arrangements currently in place and the operation of the Travellers’ Protection Fund to ensure they continue to efficiently meet the objectives of the scheme and provide the travelling public with an appropriate level of protection.
In January 2018, we published a report on travel trade consumer protection measures and concluded that, at that stage, the scheme is no longer effective. This represented Stage 1 of our work in this area.
In Stage 2 we considered how to address the fact that the existing scheme is no longer effective and what changes could be made to the scheme to make it effective. This work was paused until Directive (EU) 2015/2302 on package travel and linked travel arrangements (the “Directive”) was transposed into Irish law. This happened in March 2019. Following this, we completed Stage 2 and issued an advice paper to the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport in December 2019. Work is ongoing and this website will be updated.